Grace Ward

About Grace Ward

I analyze plant remains and other environmental data from archaeological sites to understand how people in the past organized themselves to complete collective projects. I am also interested in the theoretical frameworks archaeologists use to interpret the relationship between ecosystems and social forms.  

Most of my fieldwork is in the Lower Mississippi Valley of the southeastern US at sites where Native American communities tended forests and built monumental earthworks between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago. My teaching and mentoring focus on methods in environmental archaeology (especially paleoethnobotany), the archaeology of Native North America, the archaeology of political systems, and interdisciplinary approaches to social-ecological research. 

Selected Publications

2023. Grooms, Seth B., Grace M. V. Ward, and Tristram R. Kidder.
Convergence at Poverty Point: A Revised Chronology of the Late Archaic Lower Mississippi Valley, USA. Antiquity 97(396):1453-1469.  

2022 Ward, Grace M. V., Seth B. Grooms, Andrew G. Schroll, and Tristram R. Kidder.  
The View from Jaketown: Considering Variation in the Poverty Point Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley. American Antiquity 87(4):758-775. 

Areas of Study 

Eastern North America, the American South 

Research Interests

archaeology of Native North America; paleoethnobotany; geoarchaeology; social-ecological relationships; agroforestry; comparative political systems; collections-based research; history of archaeological theory