Dr. Sikes has a background in cultural resource management, historical archaeology, and maritime archaeology. Her research uses primary documents alongside alternative sources of evidence (including artifact assemblages, historic landscapes and buildings, watercraft, pictorial maps, and oral histories) in order to reveal the experiences of people who are underrepresented in the documentary record. Archaeological landscapes and material culture are her points of entry into historical relationships among people united or divided by ethnicity, race, language, religion, and/or class. Her past surveys and excavations have examined 17th-century multicultural settlements and sites of 18th-century urban enslavement in colonial Virginia, as well as 19th-century Irish responses to British administration of coastal waters in Ireland.

Selected Publications
(with Chuck Meide) 2011. The Achill Yawl: Vernacular Boats in Historical Context on Achill Island, Ireland. International Journal for Nautical Archaeology 40(2):235-255.

2008. Stars as Social Space? Contextualizing 17th-Century Chesapeake Star-Motif Pipes. Post-Medieval Archaeology 42(1):75-103.

Selected Awards
2011 College of William & Mary Dissertation Fellowship
2008-2009 College of William & Mary Douglas N. Morton Fellowship
2007-2008 Lewis and Clark Field Scholar, American Philosophical Society

Works in Progress
(with Chuck Meide) Manipulating the Maritime Cultural Landscape: Vernacular Boats and Economic Relations in 19th-century Achill Island, Ireland. Journal of Maritime Archaeology.

Undergraduate Courses Taught
HIST 2010 Survey of United States History I
ANTH/HIST 4860 Historical Archaeology

Graduate Courses Taught
HIST 6104/7104 Topics in American History: Historical Archaeology
HIST 7991/7992 Professional Residency Colloquium

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