Megan Nishida

Biography

Megan is an anthropological archaeologist, interested in the expressions of inequality across an interconnected landscape. She holds a MPhil in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge (2018) and both a B.A. in Anthropology and Theater from the University of Montana (2016). Her MPhil dissertation investigated the relationship between communities in an interconnected landscape around Lake Balaton, Hungary during the Early Medieval period. Megan has also worked on wildfire recovery cultural resource mitigation in Oregon. Megan has participated in fieldwork in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Canada, and Italy. 

Her research at the University of Notre Dame aims to investigate the complex series of environmental, social, and political factors that can create, maintain, and perpetuate differing expressions of inequality. Megan is working with Early Bronze Age I mortuary collections from Bab adh-Dhra’ and Fifa to investigate a corporate village model and how different hierarchical configurations may have impacted expressions of inequality.

Megan’s research interests include inequality; urbanism; social organization structures; infrastructure and resource management; trade networks; landscape analysis and GIS; stable isotope analysis; and CRM and heritage management.