Mariela Declet-Perez is an environmental and maritime archaeologist currently pursuing her PhD at the University of California – San Diego. Her research explores human ecodynamics with an emphasis in human adaptation to catastrophic events (i.e. hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes). She uses techniques from paleoclimatology, geoarchaeology, zooarchaeology and integrates current local knowledge of local communities to create a reconstruction of past marine ecosystems and climate conditions. She is currently a researcher in the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology, Geoarchaeology Lab at UCSD, and the Laboratory for Environmental Archaeology at the University of Puerto Rico. She has a BS from the University of Puerto Rico – Humacao in Marine Biology, and a MA from Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe in Caribbean Archaeology.

DUNAS Project Affiliation

Eric is a maritime archaeologist currently pursuing his PhD at the University of California – San Diego under the supervision of Dra. Isabel Rivera-Collazo. He is currently investigating submerged cultural landscapes in the Caribbean through his knowledge and expertise in maritime archaeology, geoarchaeology, environmental remote sensing, palaeogeographic reconstruction, and geographic information systems. He obtained a B.Phil in Anthropology and History from the University of Pittsburgh in 2012 and a MA in Maritime Archaeology from the University of Southampton in 2014, where his previous master’s dissertation focused on the reconstruction of cultural wetlands in the Humber Estuary. Since then, he has worked as an archaeologist and GIS consultant in the Americas, Italy, Great Britain, Lebanon, and Japan.

Curriculum Vitae
Student profile
DUNAS Project Affiliation

Loren Clark is a fourth year doctoral student in anthropology at UC San Diego under the supervision of Dra. Isabel Rivera-Collazo. Her focus is submerged prehistoric landscapes in the eastern Mediterranean, and she is working through the Human Ecology Lab as well as with the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology. After completing BA's in Classical Civilizations and Anthropology at Indiana University, Loren participated in multiple underwater and land excavations on shipwrecks in and around the Southeastern US. She then continued on to complete a Masters of Science in Maritime Archaeology from the University of Southampton where she focused on submerged prehistoric landscapes, sea-level change, and tectonics along the Albanian coastline. Prior to joining the UCSD family, Loren spent the majority of her career in cultural resource management working with a myriad of both land and maritime sites. She is particularly interested in using her experience from CRM to continue a multidisciplinary approach to maritime archaeology in the Mediterranean.

Jordan Griffin is a Black feminist archaeologist and PhD student in anthropology at UCSD. With a background in artifact preservation, she entered the PhD program to join all of the incredibly cool scholars contributing to Black archaeological knowledge. Jordan is interested in preserving underwater heritage, Black and Indigenous traditional knowledge of climate shifts, and critical ecology. She is also a writer, a wannabe community homesteader, and an advocate of seaweed and decolonizing nature.

Ana is a communications professional from Brazil, bringing with her more than 12 years of experience working at the United Nations and alongside NGOs focusing on international development. The ocean has been Ana’s greatest passion since she started diving as a teenager and it eventually brought her to UC San Diego, where she is part of the Master of Advanced Studies, Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Ana is working with the Human Ecology Lab for her Capstone Project on a climate vulnerability assessment of coastal cultural heritage in Puerto Rico, focused on a participatory approach that prioritises the perspectives of local stakeholders. Before coming to UCSD, Ana worked as Communications & Knowledge Management Specialist at the Small Grants Programme, a flagship initiative of the Global Environment Facility implemented by the UN Development Program that supports community-based projects to address environmental issues while improving livelihoods. Prior to that, Ana held similar positions at the International Labour Organization and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Brazil, and at international development NGOs in the United Kingdom. She holds a MSc in Media, Communication and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Journalism as well.

Margie M. Burton is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California San Diego. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California San Diego in 2004. She is currently Project Manager for the University of California San Diego – Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology Israel Initiative: Climate, Environmental and Cultural Change in Deep-Time. From 2005-2014 she was Research Director at the San Diego Archaeological Center, a non-profit curatorial, education and research organization located in Escondido. Her main research interests are prehistoric ceramic and ground stone technologies and their relationship to socio-economic change, employing analytical techniques such as use-wear analysis, petrography, pXRF and NAA, SEM-EDS, and X-radiography. She has worked on projects in the southern Levant, southern California and Puerto Rico. She earned her BA from Stanford University in Cultural and Social Anthropology (jointly with a BS in Biological Sciences) and her MBA from UC Berkeley.

Publications