Jake Holland-Lulewicz

Hello! 👋 I’m an archaeologist who studies the last 5,000 years of human history across eastern North America! I work primarily in the American Southeast, from Southern Appalachia to the Coast, on Ancestral Muskogean, Spanish Colonial, and Gullah-Geechee #archaeology!

Welcome, Dr. Carlson! Dr. Carlson will be directing our new anatomy program here at Penn State Anthropology in which he will train med students, grad students, and undergrads! His research program focuses on how limb bone structures reflect physical activities, locomotion, and adaptation.

🎉 Welcome, Dr. Amy Thompson! Dr. Thompson's research focuses on differential access to resources and inequality among ancient Maya communities. She uses traditional archaeological methods (survey, excavations, & radiocarbon dating) alongside cutting edge geospatial technologies (GIS & LiDAR).

🚨 New paper! 🦪 Is our archaeological data skewed by taphonomic process? 🦪 How do we move towards more nuanced approaches to morphometric studies? 🦪How can archaeologists make our studies relevant to modern socioecological research? Have a read! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 New paper! 🦪 Is our archaeological data skewed by taphonomic process? 🦪 How do we move towards more nuanced approaches to morphometric studies? 🦪How can archaeologists make our studies relevant to modern socioecological research? Have a read! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

✅ Accepted! Coming soon to an issue of Scientific Reports, stay tuned! #archaeology #ecology 🦪 📏 w/ @isazooarch.bsky.social

How do we know which ancient societies were democracies? A new study is using architecture to find out. In our #PictureOfTheWeek, anthropologist Jacob Holland-Lulewicz photographs a 2,000-year-old trash pit on the Eastern Mongolian Steppe. Images Credit: Jacob Holland-Lulewicz

Listen to me yap about how archaeologists use architecture and urban design to think about governance, how we might interpret our own federal architecture, some findings about democracy’s origins, and a few hopeful thoughts about democracies around the world! www.sciencefriday.com/segments/wha...

🐠 🌱 🦪 ⛈️ 🌡️ The other half of our lab w/ @isazooarch.bsky.social! #archaeology #ecology #sustainability #climate

🔬🏺We have an Anthropology Day alumni event coming up, and our development team made these great templates for us to showcase our labs. Had a lot of fun distilling the key contributions of the SAHND Lab here at Penn State! #archaeology #ecology #history

New analyses revise theories about Mesolithic shell middens in northern Spain. The article usefulness of high-res sampling of growth structures in mollusc shells and measurement of oxygen isotope ratios as a sensitive measure of palaeotemperature variation www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/...

🔬🏺We have an Anthropology Day alumni event coming up, and our development team made these great templates for us to showcase our labs. Had a lot of fun distilling the key contributions of the SAHND Lab here at Penn State! #archaeology #ecology #history

🚨 Asa Cameron (post-doc) was awarded a grant from the Am. Phil. Soc. for his collaborative project: “Growth at the Margins: Feeding Empire on the Mongolian Steppe”! #archaeology

🚨 Christina (@cmcarolus.bsky.social) was awarded a grant from the Am. Phil. Soc. for her collaborative project: “Vertical Archipelagos of Prehistoric Highland Inner Asia: Exploring Integrative Agropastoral Landscapes and Long Term Socioecological Dynamics at Kyzyl Unkur-1, Kyrgyzstan”! #archaeology

Cotton seeds from Kyrgyzstan in the lab today! #archaeology #history #ecology #plants #pbot

This bluff on Ossabaw Island (Georgia) gets cut back up to 70cm a year from erosion due to more extreme tides, more frequent storms, and increased boat traffic. The erosion continually exposes archaeological features. Each year we assess and salvage what we can #archaeology #climatechange #heritage

This is a landmark paper in Science: archaeology informing current political science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Clovis First as a model for peopling of the Americas is 1.) Outdated 2.) Inconsistent with genetic evidence 3.) Inconsistent with archaeological evidence 4.) Based on holding American sites to a different standard than anywhere else in the world, and 5.) Rooted in colonialism (1/2)

“History rhymes, it doesn’t repeat. And in those rhymes there are things that we need to pay attention to.” Our paper covered by NPR’s All Things Considered via a short interview with our lead, @gfeinman.bsky.social! Give it a listen! #archaeology #history #democracy www.npr.org/2026/03/19/n...

elpais.com/ciencia/2026...

A comparison of 40 civilisations, including in the Indus Valley and Mexico, challenges the idea that Athens was the first city to experiment with people power

Press release for our new paper! “…people across the world created inclusive political systems, even under difficult conditions…An understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.” phys.org/news/2026-03...

Democracy isn't a modern luxury—it's a political strategy with deep roots. In our new study for Science Advances, we analyse 40 different societies and develop a framework for measuring human governance along a collective-autocratic axis. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Power and Inclusiveness Across Deep Time. Our collaboration between archaeology and political science, out today in Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Press release for our new paper! “…people across the world created inclusive political systems, even under difficult conditions…An understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.” phys.org/news/2026-03...

🚨Out today in Science Advances! It is more important than ever to understand the roots and historical breadth of the core features of democratic institutions and autocratic alternatives, what these practices are associated with, and their effects and consequences. 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Psyched to visit Michigan State next month! #archaeology #history #NAIS

Psyched to visit Michigan State next month! #archaeology #history #NAIS

Tomorrow 👀 😅 ahhhhhh #ultra #ultramarathon #running #trailrunning #50miler

When you're excavating all these little crown conchs like the one on the top that people ate and discarded about a thousand years ago, and then can walk 20 meters to the shore and pick up a live one. From southwestern Florida a few years ago! #archaeology #ecology

9 years ago. Excavating shell midden at Pineland along the Gulf Coast of southwestern Florida #archaeology #ecology

2,400 year-old skeleton mosaic discovered in Turkey with the caption: “Be cheerful, enjoy your life” Original post

9 years ago. Excavating shell midden at Pineland along the Gulf Coast of southwestern Florida #archaeology #ecology

200 year old fish scale from a plantation-era trash pit. We’re finding hundreds of fish scales (in both historic and earlier Indigenous contexts). Matthew and Christina are going to explore micro approaches to species identification! #archaeology #ecology #fish #fisheries #history

New dates back today from a 4,000yr old shell midden on the Georgia Coast! A perfectly accumulated context! c. 2 meters of regular midden accumulation in less than 100yrs 😍 #archaeology #ecology #radiocarbon

Whats up in the lab today? About to run 47 dates from a 2,000yr-old settlement of the Xiongnu Empire in Mongolia and 23 dates from a rock shelter in Kyrgyzstan that was once along the Silk Road! Asa and Christina (@cmcarolus.bsky.social) are doing the COOLEST work! #archaeology #history #radiocarbon

Stay tuned for our forthcoming paper demonstrating a key link between more autocratic forms of governance and a reliance on external financing. Also see Blanton et al. 2021 on the topic of financing (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...): (see passage below) #archaeology #economics #polisci

🪡 General zoology, or Systematic natural history London, Printed for G. Kearsley, 1800-1826. [Source]

Lab Co-PI, Dr. Isabelle Holland-Lulewicz (@isazooarch.bsky.social) is on the editorial board of this exciting, brand new archaeology journal, the LEIZA Journal of Archaeology published by @leizarchaeology.bsky.social!! Check it out! #archaeology www.leiza.de/forschung/pu...

Excited to announce the launch of the LEIZA Journal of Archaeology (LJA), a new #DiamondOpenAccess, double-blind peer-reviewed online journal of world #archaeology. More Info: www.leiza.de/forschung/pu...

About to date some of the earliest pottery in North America! These were tempered with Spanish moss c. 4800 yrs ago. Charred fibers are preserved in the sherd and can be directly dated! Note the swirly linear voids left from fibers that were burnt out in the production process #archaeology #history

🎶 the rest is still uncrustable 🎶 (or whatever Natasha Bedingfield said) #run #running #trailrunning #ultra #ultramarathon #trailrun w/ @isazooarch.bsky.social

🎶 the rest is still uncrustable 🎶 (or whatever Natasha Bedingfield said) #run #running #trailrunning #ultra #ultramarathon #trailrun w/ @isazooarch.bsky.social

🪡 Ichthyologie; ou, Histoire naturelle des poissons: . Berlin, Chez l'auteur, 1796.. [Source]