Madeleine McLeester
Assistant Professor
Madeleine McLeester is an environmental archaeologist who investigates anthropogenic landscapes, plant collection, human-environment entanglements, early colonial encounters, and sports. She specializes in ancient agricultural practices in marginal environments in precontact eastern North America and employs pollen and stable isotopic approaches as well as historical record analyses. She is currently directing a collaborative archaeological field project with the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin as well as additional projects in Michigan and Maine.
Contact
Department(s)
Anthropology
Education
- B.A. The College, University of Chicago
- M.A. University of Chicago
- Ph.D. University of Chicago
Selected Publications
2025. McLeester, M., Ferwerda, C., Alperstein, J., Overstreet, D., Grignon, D., and Casana, J. Archaeological evidence of intensive indigenous agriculture in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, USA. Science, 388(6751): 1083-1085.
2024. McLeester, M. and Casana, J. (Eds). Finding Fields: The Archaeology of Agricultural Landscapes. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association: Volume 35, Issue 1.
2023. McLeester, M., Anastasio, A., and Grignon, J. Enduring Legacies of Agriculture: Long-term Vegetation Impacts of Ancestral Menominee Agriculture, Wisconsin, USA, Ethnobiology Letters, 14(1): 80-91.
2020. McLeester, M., & Schurr, M. Paleoclimate of the Little Ice Age to the Present in the Kankakee Valley of Illinois and Indiana, USA Based on 18O/16O Isotope Ratios of Freshwater Shells. Environmental Archaeology, 26(6), 555–566.