Dr. Elizabeth A. Moore, Virginia's New State Archaeologist

Published July 2, 2019

— Moore joins DHR after serving since 2007 as Curator of Archaeology at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, Martinsville, where she also was assistant director of Research and Collections for two years. —

Elizabeth Moore is no stranger to DHR. Since 2007, she served as chairman of our agency's State Review Board, before recently stepping down. Under her former position at VMNH, she also oversaw laboratory analysis and investigation of artifact collections recovered during DHR field schools on the Eastern Shore, and participated in, and led volunteers during many of those annual and semi-annual events. Moore’s career research has focused on how faunal remains—bones, shells, hides, etc., and molecular vestiges of DNA or proteins—can offer insight into the ways “people in the Middle Atlantic region have used animals and food through time for subsistence, economics, ceremonial, and social purposes, particularly in Virginia and Maryland,” in her words. During her career in Virginia, she has served as president of the Archeological Society of Virginia, which recognized her as “Professional Archeologist of the Year” in 2015. She has served as a member of CoVA’s Collections Committee and as Virginia’s State co-Coordinator for Public Archaeology with the Society for American Archaeology, among her membership in many other professional organizations. Author or co-author of numerous technical reports and articles in professional journals, as well as contributing chapters in edited books, Moore earned her doctoral and master’s degrees in anthropology from The American University in Washington DC, and her undergraduate degree from State University of New York at Potsdam. She replaces former State Archaeologist Dr. Michael Barber who retired in March.
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