Staff profile

In May 2024, I graduated from West Virginia University with a BA in History with minors in French and Anthropology. I graduated in January 2026 with my Master of Arts in Archaeology from Durham, where I researched gold in ancient Egypt and its value in the New Kingdom. 

I was a governor's intern at Grave Creek Mound Archaeology Complex in 2023 where I researched burial shrouding and analyzed copper staining on skeletal remains from an intrusive colonial burial. In early 2024, I interned at the William A Neal Museum of the Health Sciences at West Virginia University where I documented artifacts and aided in the creation of an online catalogue. Currently, I am volunteering at the Oriental Museum to document metal corrosion in Ancient Egyptian artefacts and update catalogue descriptions.

• My MA research feeds heavily into my current research. For my Masters, I researched gold's place in Egyptian society and how it was valued by its people. Through pXRF detection, I studied gold alloys in artifacts at the Oriental Museum and found that gold was not often alloyed until the New Kingdom. I discovered that goldsmiths, over the course of thousands of years moved from a lower-class status to an upper class one that allowed for rich burials in the New Kingdom. These discoveries, along with the deconstruction of modern biases, have proven that gold was not valued in an economic mindset until much later in Egypt's history, but rather its value stemmed from its religious roots in mythology.
• Currently, I am researching goldsmiths in ancient Egypt and their social mobility between the Old and New Kingdoms, to determine why this class of skilled labourers was able to move at all in an otherwise static social caste. I am also continuing my research of gold alloys in Egyptian artifacts through pXRF and microscopic analysis.