Megan Belcher
Research Interests
Megan Belcher is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in paleoethnobotany. She is interested in past plant use in Eastern North America to explore cultural foodways, food production and security, the origins of agriculture, and the development of agrobiodiversity throughout the Holocene. Through a combination of archaeological, experimental, and ecological data, she explores the cultivation practices and path to domestication for several crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, such as Chenopodium berlandieri, Iva annua, and Polygonum erectum.
Her previous research includes the macrobotanical analysis of a colonial site in Virginia to explore the intersection of European, Native American, and African diasporic foodways in the New World through the lens of ethnobotanical and archaeological evidence. Her other research interests include Native American food sovereignty, public archaeology, Native American ethnobotany, gender studies, and foodways traditions in the Southeastern United States.
