Biography

Kris Bovy is a zooarchaeologist, specializing in the analysis of bird bones from shell midden sites in the Pacific Northwest Coast. Bovy has conducted archaeological analysis and fieldwork in a wide variety of settings throughout North America. She works closely with faculty and students in the interdisciplinary underwater archaeology minor and history master’s (archaeology and anthropology option) programs. Bovy teaches introductory and advanced undergraduate courses, including Introduction to Archaeology, Coastal Archaeology, Archaeology of the Americas, Archaeological Method and Theory, Seminar in Cultural Heritage, and Unity of Anthropology. She recently won the URI Excellence in General Education Award.

The focus of Bovy’s research is on the history of human and animal interactions in marine settings. She attempts to both better understand past human behavior and generate data to address contemporary environmental and biological conservation issues. Bovy recently completed work on a collaborative National Science Foundation grant entitled “Impacts of Abrupt Environmental Change on North Pacific Human Ecosystem Dynamics using High-Resolution Zooarchaeological Records from Coastal Washington.” Results from this project were published in a special open access issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports in 2019. Bovy also collaborated on a project with Jessica Watson (former URI student), and Dr. Julia Parrish and Jane Dolliver of the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) to evaluate how recent data on beached bird carcasses may help inform archaeological interpretations. 

Since 2019 Bovy has been collaborating with Prof. Rod Mather and Prof. Catherine DeCesare (History Department) and Lorén Spears (Executive Director, Tomaquag Museum) to explore the long term history of the URI Campus at Kingston. The goal of the project is to highlight the long and complicated history of the URI campus land and make the connections that Narragansett people have with this place, both past and present, more visible to the campus community. This collaboration culminated in a campus walking tour, a URI Center for the Humanities lecture, and a temporary 1 credit course: URI Campus History: A Walk Through Time offered in Fall 2020. 

Bovy has served as the Chair of Sociology & Anthropology since Fall 2019. She is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.