Rate My Professor Samantha Fladd

Samantha Fladd is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Museum of Anthropology at Washington State University. She earned her Ph.D. from the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona in 2018, with research centered on stratified deposits and deposition practices in ancestral Hopi villages at Homol'ovi. Prior to joining WSU in 2023, Fladd served as Curator of Archaeology at the Museum of Natural History and as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2019 to 2023. Earlier in her career, she worked as a supervisory field archaeologist at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.

Fladd is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in the pre-Hispanic Southwest United States, particularly the Ancestral Pueblos of the Four Corners region. Her research explores how social identities, including gender, are negotiated through architecture, spatial organization, and ritual practices. Key topics include room closure rites, miniature ceramic vessels, ritual fauna, and water management systems at sites such as Homol'ovi I and Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. She also advances decolonizing approaches in museums, focusing on cultural care, co-curation of exhibits, and community-engaged research and outreach. Notable publications include 'Miniature in Everything but Meaning: A Contextual Analysis of Miniature Vessels at Homol'ovi I' (Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2019, with Saul L. Hedquist and E. Charles Adams), 'Ritual Fauna and Social Organization at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon' (2018), 'Beyond Leaky Pipelines: Feminist Inequality Critiques in Archaeology' (Advances in Archaeological Practice, 2024, co-authored and guest-edited with Sarah Kurnick), and contributions to 'Capturing Water: Puebloan Resilience and Agricultural Water Control in Chaco Canyon' (University of Utah Press, 2024). Her work has garnered approximately 191 citations. Fladd has received the INSPIRE! Community Engaged Research Seed Grant from WSU and a Subvention Award from the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society. She serves on the WSU Faculty Senate through 2028 and presents public lectures, including 'Room Closure Practices in the Pueblo Southwest' for the Archaeological Institute of America.