Kate Rose is an anthropological archaeologist, specializing in landscape analysis and ancient urbanism in the Near East and North Africa. Her PhD dissertation at Harvard University is a comparative spatial analysis of Kushite royal cemeteries in Northern Sudan. As a researcher with the ERC DiverseNile Project at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany from 2022 to 2024, she investigated landscape changes during the Bronze Age borderspace of the Attab to Ferka region. She has also held numerous lectureships and teaching positions at Harvard University and Boston University, and is interested in the intersection of pedagogy and fieldwork. She has served in various leadership positions on projects in Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Spain. She is currently the Director of Programs at the Institute for Field Research.

While a fellow at CAMEL, she will undertake research that investigates urbanism and settlement patterns in Northern Sudan. The site of Jebel Barkal, known for its elite palaces, temples, pyramids, was also the location of the ancient Kushite capital of Napata. Recently a Meroitic settlement was identified, known as the “East Mound.” Kate plans to use LiDAR and thermal imagery data collected in 2023 to better understand the spatial extent of this settlement. In particular, the East Mound is located near the modern, dense agricultural fields and palm groves along the Nile. She will attempt to use multiple lines of data to determine to what extent the surrounding agricultural area has been covered by remote sensing surveys. She aims to process the data and identify previously unknown architectural and environmental features that further elucidate the trajectory of urban development and identity at Barkal.

Henry Bacha is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. An archaeologist and historical anthropologist, his research focusses on the “transconquest” longue dureé in the Andes – that is, the historical period spanning the successive rise of the Inka empire and the establishment of Spanish colonial rule in the region. His dissertation project, preliminarily titled “The Colonial Afterlives of Inka Resettlement in the Pampas River Basin (Ayacucho, Peru), 1400 – 1700 A.D.,” will utilize archaeological and historical methodologies to interrogate the political life and experience of Indigenous communities under Inka imperialism and Spanish colonialism. Understanding the terrain of colonial political negotiation and contestation to be shaped by complex and dynamic entanglements between Andean communities and landscapes, this project interrogates the affective and material influences exerted by prior histories of Inka resettlement over the formation of colonial society in the Andes.

As a CAMEL fellow during the 2024-2025 academic year, Henry will pursue a project entitled “Toward a GIS and remote sensing approach to camelid movement in the Andes.” This project endeavors to explore the phenomenon of llama caravanning along the along the Qhapaq Ñan (Inka road system) during the late pre-Hispanic and early colonial periods in the Andes (ca. 1450-1700 A.D.). Despite the historically and archaeologically documented importance of caravanning to Inka statecraft, political economy, and social life, however, little scholarly attention has heretofore been directed to nonhuman animal (i.e., camelid) movement along the Inka road system. This project will address this lacuna by exploring the applicability of a variety of geospatial and remote sensing methods – including those drawn from disciplines beyond archaeology – to the movement of llama caravans along the Inka road network. By integrating methods and perspectives from landscape archaeology, zooarchaeology, and animal ecology, this project seeks to recenter animal mobility, labor, and agency in the study of Andean landscapes.