Annalee will receive the annual $2000 fellowship award. She plans to travel to Russia summer 2019 for further study of Russian. And the Vice President for International Banking of Huntington Bank asks to meet her. Well done Annalee!

Congratulations to Abby Buffington who passed the oral defense of her dissertation, Using Phytolith Assemblages to Detect a Pastoral Niche in the Vegetation Communities and Plant Exploitation Strategies of Early-Middle Holocene Herders in Wadi Sana, Yemen.

Left to Right: Mark Moritz; Mark Hubbe; Abby Buffington; Joy McCorriston; Julie Field; Graduate Faculty Representative Matthew Anderson; (External Examiner Arlene Rosen not shown)

ASOM Team undergraduate Drew Arbogast has been offered a graduate place in the OSU School of Environment and Natural Resources to study conservation. He has also been accepted at University of Iowa. Congratulations Drew! (We hate to lose you!)

Awarded by the OSU College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program, the Eleanor Ruffington McMahon Award supports undergraduate women honors scholars’ travel to present at conferences. Annalee receives more than the usual cap of $500 to present her research  at the April 2019 Society for Ethnobiology. Congratulations Annalee!

Congratulations Abby! Abby has mentored six undergraduates in McCorriston’s laboratory, and several have gone on to great achievements–Anna and Craig to graduate study, Drew to scholarships and an honors’ thesis, Annalee to win scholarships and travel awards. Accolades and all our appreciation to Abby.

ASOM researcher Annalee Sekulic was among 26 students selected to present at the Second Ohio State Undergraduate Research Day at Capitol Square. Here’s Annalee next to her poster on the macroremains from hyrax middens in Oman:

Joy McCorriston, Mark Moritz, Abigail Buffington,
Konstantin Pustovoytov, Sarah Ivory, Wael AbuAzizeh
pp. 119-133

The Directorate for Archaeology at the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Sultanate of Oman, includes two members from Salalah who have worked especially closely with the ASOM Project. Ali Al Maashani (right) and Ali Mehri (second from right) have accompanied us into the field for multiple seasons. Here is the team holding their prize for third place in the the cultural questions competition. We are so proud for them! Go team!

We had a our first workshop, with a field trip to the Hopewell Mounds National Park (courtesy of Tim as guide). Everyone presented a short update of research and some theoretical-methodological overviews during the first long day of papers. Konstantin and Dominik SKYPED in from Russia and UK respectively. Andrew Anderson (Oman Botanic Garden) gave the most beautiful slides and Annalee’s science journey and macrofossil discoveries took our breath away as a closing glimpse of what it means to discover science. On the second day, we did “break-out” sessions as groups of archaeology, modelling, and paleoecology. The sign of success is that some of us had trouble sorting ourselves into one break-out cohort! We wish our Omani colleagues had also been able to join us. Abby and Sarah did a fantastic job organizing. Here we are left to right: rear–Drew, Joy, Andrew, Louise, Dan, Scott, Kyle O., Kyle R, Mark; left to right front–Sarah, Kim, Abby, Annalee, Anna, Tim, Ian. (We miss you Ali, Ken, Dominik, Konstantin, and OBG team)

Here we are at the Hopewell Mounds National Park: (below)

Fantastic news! Both Annalee Sekulic and Drew Arbogast received 2018-2019 Undergraduate Research Scholarships from The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences. Drew’s scholarship will support his study of phytoliths to build a Dhufar reference collection; Annalee will use her scholarship to extend her study of the macrofossils from the Dhufar hyrax middens. Congratulations to both of you!