ASOR Welcomes Meagan Shirley as New Office Coordinator
Meagan Shirley joined ASOR as the Office Coordinator on October 1, 2019. Meagan will be assisting the office staff at the James F. Strange Center in Alexandria, VA, with all administrative tasks. Meagan comes to ASOR from George Washington’s Mount Vernon, where she was employed as a Collections Technician. She helped curators and visiting scholars access objects formerly owned by George and Martha Washington.
Prior to this, Meagan worked as a commercial archaeologist with various CRM companies in the greater Washington, D.C., area. She worked on a range of sites, including a Prehistoric quartzite quarry along the Potomac River and a nineteenth-century cemetery in Maryland.
Meagan received her B.A. from The College of Wooster in 2015. Her thesis was titled “Anglo-Saxon and Viking Ship Burials as Indicators of Status and Power.” She continued her studies at the University of Sheffield, UK, where she received her M.A. in Medieval Archaeology in 2016. Meagan focused on the Viking presence in England in the Early Middle Ages, particularly the Great Heathen Army. Her graduate thesis, “An Examination of the Dress Accessories from Torksey,” examined the Viking winter camp at Torksey where members of the Great Heathen Army collected and altered dress accessories. She examined a broad assemblage of dress accessories, including Anglo-Saxon, Merovingian, Irish, and Scandinavian, to hypothesize that the range of multi-cultural accessories along with alterations and secondary usage suggested an occupation by the Great Heathen Army in 872 C.E.
Meagan excavated at the Thornton Abbey Project in Lincolnshire, UK, for several seasons with the University of Sheffield. The twelfth-century Abbey and surrounding precinct were studied for evidence of occupation after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. However, an Early Medieval church and cemetery were discovered outside of the former Abbey walls. Meagan helped to excavate the cemetery, and subsequent analysis showed 48 people had been the victims of the Plague when the Black Death swept through Europe beginning in 1347. Meagan also helped to conduct GIS work at the Anglo-Saxon site of Little Carlton with a team from the University of Sheffield.
Meagan is extremely excited to be working with the ASOR team. She first heard of ASOR during her undergraduate studies from her professors who attended the Annual Meetings. Meagan is happy that she now gets the opportunity to work officially for ASOR and to assist its members and visitors with any questions or concerns.
