Corey Herrmann

Assistant Professor of the Practice of Anthropology

Dr. Corey Herrmann is an anthropological archaeologist working in western South America, with past experience on projects in Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico. Since 2018 he has been the director of the Proyecto Arqueológico Río Grande de Chone (PARGC). This project, supported by Yale University as well as an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (#2023376), investigated early social complexity and village life among pre-Columbian communities known to archaeologists as the Valdivia, Chorrera, and Jama-Coaque cultures, in the Río Grande de Chone of Manabí province, coastal Ecuador. At multiple points these societies contended with stochastic volcanic eruptions emanating from the highlands, which deposited volcanic ash (tephra). Herrmann works to incorporate insights from contemporary disaster anthropology into the study of past disasters, balancing the quantitative, archaeometric study of varied material culture (ceramic, obsidian, tephra) with qualitative anthropological examinations of resistance, resilience, and social change. These myriad perspectives help reconstruct a complicated (and eminently human) pre-Columbian narrative of solidarity amid disastrous times. These investigations are done in ongoing service to the comunas montubias of the Río Grande de Chone and throughout Manabí, to help reconnect present-day people with the amazingly rich cultural heritage they have inherited.