My research, focusing primarily on South Asia and, to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and the Southwestern United States, addresses a number of related issues including the formation and transformation of anthropogenic landscapes; the causes and consequences of agricultural change; colonialism and imperialism; and the interplay between political power, economic organization, and social strategies of production and exchange.  In following these issues, I have been particularly interested in investigating how such processes might be manifest in the archaeological record and in developing methods for investigating these critical processual concerns of contemporary archaeology.  My overall research strategy has always been to explore multiple independent lines of evidence in order to realistically address both the possibilities and limits of any one form of analysis.  Given my interest in regional dynamics, both ecological and sociopolitical, in most of my research projects I have combined analysis of plant microfossils and sediments, chemical analysis, qualitative and quantitative analysis of texts, and close archaeological research (regional survey, excavation, and artifact analysis). My work is thus a form of historical anthropology which also makes use of methods and perspectives from archaeology, history, geography, and other fields.  More recently, I have expanded my training in geology and geochemistry, with a focus on stable isotope ecology.