March 2023 | By Katelyn DiBenedetto

Tell us about your background

While I grew up in upstate NY, my favorite family vacations were always to the ocean. For years I wanted to be a marine biologist until I attempted chemistry in high school. I decided that I was better suited to the social sciences and focused on anthropology in my undergraduate and graduate studies.  

I conducted my dissertation research on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus where I studied the Neolithic—one of the most transformational periods in human history when humans transitioned from hunting and gathering to the domestication of plants and animals. One cool thing about this time period is that people had to import some of the major domesticates (sheep, goat, cattle, pig) and wild deer to Cyprus. They obviously used some type of watercraft, but we have yet to recover physical evidence of this craft. I have always maintained a deep appreciation for humanity’s interaction with the sea. For this reason, I am beyond excited to use the skills I have honed over the last decade to help support a network of researchers that focus on nearshore coastal systems where biodiversity and people are concentrated and interact the most. 

^{Katelyn and her Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Alan Simmons, hold recently excavated cattle bones. Cattle were introduced to the island during the Neolithic and then disappeared shortly thereafter for several thousand years.}