Accolades:

• Mathias D'Sousa Scholarship Recipient/Nitze Scholar

About Katie

Name:
Katie Cavallo, Class of 2004

I just read:
A Right to Die , a Nero Wolfe mystery by Rex Stout.

My favorite CD:
"Sunshine on Leith" by the Proclaimers

A Class everyone should take at St. Mary's:
Sociology of Gender

Favorite spot on campus:
The hill near Queen Anne where you can see the sun set over the river.

You'd be more likely to see me on:
The Discovery Channel

As a young child, Cavallo easily identified her interest in playing in the dirt. Her wise mother bought her sensible clothes because "frilly dresses didn't wash as easily as pants and T-shirts and since I was going to play in the dirt anyway, I might as well be in something she could wash more easily." However, her serious pursuit of archaeology began when she was ten years old. Her parents encouraged her by bringing her along on family digs and sending her to archaeology camp in Alexandria, Virginia.

At St. Mary's, Cavallo majored in sociology/anthropology because of her ripened interest in archaeology. She played saxophone in the jazz band and tutored English as a second language through the GED volunteer program run by For Goodness' Sake. Her St. Mary's Project was inspired by a conversation she had with her project mentor, adjunct associate professor of anthropology Julie King, and King's co-worker at Historic St. Mary's City (HSMC), Ed Chaney. "They were trying to help me come up with a project and mentioned briefly that the next artifact type they were thinking of putting on their Web site was white clay tobacco pipes.  I had used pipes in my high school senior project and already knew something about them.  It seemed like the logical choice."

The St. Mary's Project, "Analysis of Marked and Decorated White Clay Pipes from the Lower Patuxent Drainage" went so well that she was persuaded by King to present her results at the annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Archaeological Conference (MAAC)in Rehoboth, Delaware last spring. The MAAC meeting is one of the most important venues for archaeologists working in the region to share information about new discoveries. This January, she'll travel to York, England, to present her findings at the annual meeting of the international Society for Historical Archaeology (www.sha.org).Currently, Cavallo is working at HSMC in the archaeology lab, processing artifacts recovered from the Slave Quarter/Print House site near Smith's Ordinary. She plans to study archaeology in graduate school and then work toward a Ph.D. in archaeology.