SOAN Welcomes New Anthropology Professor Nawa Sugiyama

SOAN is delighted to welcome Professor Nawa Sugiyama to the department and to Mason. This semester Professor Sugiyama is teaching:

Most recently, she was a Peter Buck Post-Doctoral Fellow at the National Museum of Natural History. She completed her Ph.D. from Harvard University, analyzing faunal remains from dedicatory caches at Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Specifically, Professor Sugiyama conducted her doctorate work in the documentation of some of Teotihuacan's earliest evidence for wild animal management for ritualistic purposes including some of the most specialized carnivores on the landscape: golden eagles, wolves, pumas, and jaguars. For the post-doctoral project, she is examining zooarchaeological and isotopic evidence from the Maya site of Copán, Honduras, to test if similar animal management regimes were practiced for state-level ritualized activities like the sixteen felids sacrificed in cache next to a prominent altar, commissioned by the sixteenth and final ruler of the Copán dynasty. As instrumental icons of power and rulership in Mesoamerica, Sugiyama explores how past human-animal encounters were integral component of the social-political landscape.