Harvard University
Department of Anthropology
Peabody Museum 570
11 Divinity Avenue,
Cambridge, MA 02138
shaylamonroe@fas.harvard.edu
Profile
Shayla Monroe received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), in 2021. She specializes in faunal analysis, the social zoo archaeology of Sudan and Egypt, the archaeology of African pastoralism. Her dissertation analyzes the acquisition of cattle at the ancient Egyptian colonial fortress of Askut (c. 1850- 1550 BC) and its implications for culture contact and asymmetrical power relations between pastoralists and non-pastoralists. Monroe earned her M.A. in Anthropology from UCSB in 2015. Since 2013, she has worked as an archaeologist at the 3rd Cataract of the Nile River in Sudan, first at the Egyptian colonial site at Tombos, and then at the Kerma hinterlands site, Abu Fatima, also in northern Sudan. Monroe began her career at Howard University, where she earned degrees in Anthropology and English (2012). She also spent two seasons (2010 and 2011) working at l‘Hermitage plantation (also known as the Best Farm Slave Village) with the National Park Service in Frederick, Maryland.
Dr. Monroe’s present research focuses on mapping social networks and relationships among pastoralists in the Middle Nile Valley and adjacent regions from the Late Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age.
Selected Publications
Monroe. S, Smith S. T, Mcclure. S (2023). “Pastoralism, hunting and coexistence: Domesticated and wild bovids in Neolithic Sudan”.
Monroe. S (2022). “Tradition, Purpose, and Technology“.
Monroe. S, Mcclure. S, Produg. E, Jovice. J, Zadovny. E (2022). ” The Zooarchaeology of Neolithic farmers: herding and hunting on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia”