Hegmon, Michelle

In the broadest sense, Michelle Hegmon is interested in the human social realm in the context of the larger environment. From this perspective, she is involved in the development of new transdisciplinary research projects that draw together natural scientists and archaeologists to investigate long term socio-environmental processes.

More specifically, her work involves social and feminist theory, archaeological approaches to gender, focus on middle range societies and an emphasis on ethnographic comparisons. Methodologically her work often involves ceramics, as well as analyses of architecture and material culture in general. Hegmon has done most of her research in the American Southwest, and since 1993 has been collaborating with Margaret Nelson on the Eastern Mimbres Archaeological Project, which is studying processes of land use, interaction and regional reorganization in the Classic and Postclassic Mimbres periods (ca. 1000-1450) in southwest New Mexico.