Dr. Susan Kooiman
Title: Assistant Professor
Phone: 650-2724
Email: skooima@siue.edu
Office: PH 0403A
Degree: PhD Michigan State University
Teaching Interests:
My research and teaching interests focus on foodways, pottery, and the precontact Indigenous peoples of Eastern North America. I love both introducing students to the basic concepts of anthropology and archaeology and taking them deeper into the archaeological topics of North American prehistory, diet, and technology. As a proponent of experiential learning, I also enjoy teaching laboratory and field methods.
Courses Taught:
ANTH 111A: Human Ancestry and Adaptations
ANTH 270: Exploring Archaeology
ANTH 301: Anthropology in Practice
ANTH 334: Food and Cultural Change
ANTH 336: North American Prehistory
ANTH 436: Public Archaeology
ANTH 475: Archaeology Field School
Field School Site Reports:
2022 Gehring
Segue Radio Show
- Click here to hear Dr. Kooiman and Dean Leonard discuss her anthropology career and her book, “Ancient Pottery, Cuisine, and Society at the Northern Great Lakes (Midwest Archaeological Perspectives)."
Personal History:
A Wisconsin native, I attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then worked in cultural resource management for the Wisconsin Historical Society Museum Archaeology Program for two-and-a-half years. I got an M.S. in Archaeology from Illinois State University, where my thesis focused on pottery function in the Upper Great Lakes during the Woodland period. I received my Ph.D. in anthropology from Michigan State University in 2018, where I studied Woodland culinary and technological change in the Upper Great Lakes. During my doctoral program, I also became involved with the MSU Campus Archaeology Program, where my interest in public archaeology emerged, particularly in the form of food-based outreach.
My journey at SIUE began in Fall 2019 and I am thrilled to be a part of the SIUE Anthropology team and to work closely with students from varying backgrounds. It is a joy to work at a university located in an archaeologically-rich area in the Midwest, which allows me to both continue working in the Upper Great Lakes and explore new local research questions and opportunities here in Illinois.
Research Activities:
My research focuses on the archaeology of food, cooking, and cooking technology (pottery). My past research has focused on culinary and technological change in the Upper Great Lakes region of North America during the Woodland period (200 BC – AD 1600). I explore these topics through functional analysis of pottery and analysis of adhered and absorbed food residues (in collaboration with specialists). My immediate future research plans are to investigate the relationships between the environment, food selection and food processing in the Great Lakes. I am also interested in pre-Mississippian foodways and pottery in the American Bottom, particularly how evolving social relationships affected foodways and technologies. I would also like to continue to refine methods for investigating past diet, particularly through the use of food residues adhered to and absorbed by food processing tools.
I am also a proponent of public archaeology. During my graduate program at Michigan State University, I was involved with their Campus Archaeology Program, where I became interested in historic and ancient meal reconstruction, which we found to be a dynamic and tangible way for the public to engage with their past. The rich archaeological and historical setting of the SIUE campus and the surrounding region provides an excellent avenue through which to reach out to and work with the local community and the Native American community to build dynamic understandings of the past.
Publications:
Kooiman, Susan M. Ancient Pottery, Cuisine, and Society at the Northern Great Lakes. 2021. University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend, IN. 2021.
Kooiman, Susan M, Sean B. Dunham, Christine Stephenson. 2019. The Cloudman Site: A Multicomponent Woodland and Historic Period Site in the Northern Great Lakes. The Wisconsin Archeologist 100 (1-2):57-68. 2019.
Kooiman, Susan M., Heather Walder. 2019. Reconsidering the Chronology: Carbonized Food Residue AMS Dates and Compositional Analysis of a Curated Collection from the Upper Great Lakes. American Antiquity 84(3):495-515.
Albert, Rebecca A., Susan M. Kooiman, Caitlin Clark, William A. Lovis. 2018. Microbotanical evidence for 2000 year old Maize (Zea mays) from Northern Lake Michigan. American Antiquity 83(2):345-355.
Kooiman, Susan M. 2016. Woodland Pottery Function, Cooking, and Diet in the Upper Great Lakes of North America. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 41(3):1-25. 2016.
Skibo, James M., Mary E. Malainey, and Susan M. Kooiman. 2016. Early Pottery in the North American Upper Great Lakes: Exploring Traces of Use. Antiquity 90(353):1226-1237.
