Biography
Rachel Johnson is an archaeology PhD candidate specializing in the archaeology of the Andes, the Upper Amazon, and archaeometric ceramic analyses. Prior to coming to Tulane, she earned a B.A. in anthropology, a B.S. in geology, and a minor in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh. She is broadly interested in craft production, social identity, and the long-term impacts of social and economic interactions. Her research uses a combination of formal ceramic analysis, ceramic thin-section petrography, and portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) to identify shared technological practice in order to reconstruct past social networks.
Her current project develops a diachronic understanding of ceramic technological practice in the Huaritambo Valley, eastern Ancash, Perú (1100 BCE - 900 CE), to evaluate the social and economic changes accompanying the rise of the Chavín Horizon - a unifying cultural period (c. 950-400 BCE) characterized by widespread exchange networks - its subsequent decline, and reorganization to Recuay polities. Other ongoing work traces interaction networks between the eastern highlands and the Upper Amazon, examining the role of lowland societies in the development of early highland Andean civilization. Her research has been supported through collaboration with numerous archaeological projects and the reanalysis of museum collections housed by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (University of California, Berkeley) and the American Museum of Natural History. Johnson's research has been supported by the Rust Family Foundation and the National Science Foundation.