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WORK TITLE: Nahia
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WEBSITE: https://emilylenajones.com/
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PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Vassar College, B.A., 1996; University of Washington, M.A., 2001; University of Washington, Ph.D., 2004.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Archaeologist and professor. University of New Mexico, professor of anthropology; UNM Zooarchaeology Lab, director.
AVOCATIONS:Baking, hiking, gardening, yoga, beekeeping.
AWARDS:Recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Chateaubriand Fellowship.
WRITINGS
Contributor to numerous academic journals, including Antiquity, Science, and Quaternary Research.
SIDELIGHTS
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2025, review of Nahia.
Publishers Weekly, January 13, 2025, review of Nahia, p. 59.
ONLINE
Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico website, https://anthropology.unm.edu/ (September 10, 2025), author bio.
Emily Lena Jones website, https://emilylenajones.com/ (September 10, 2025).
Dr. Emily Jones is an archaeologist and a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She studies the connections between people, food, and the environment in prehistory, particularly in Southwest Europe. Her work has been published in Antiquity, Science, Quaternary Research, and many other journals, and she is the author of a nonfiction academic book, In Search of the Broad Spectrum Revolution in Paleolithic Southwest Europe. She has been a Fulbright scholar in Spain and a Chateaubriand Fellow in France. Nahia is her fiction debut. Emily enjoys baking, hiking, gardening, yoga, and beekeeping.
Emily Lena Jones is a writer, photographer, and professor of anthropology and faculty associate of the Latin American and Iberian Institute and Center for Stable Isotopes at the University of New Mexico. She studies past human-environment interactions through the lens of archaeological animal remains, with a particular interest in the connections between humans, non-human animals, and environmental change.
Emily L Jones
Professor and UNM Regents' Lecturer
Director, Zooarchaeology Lab
Photo: Emily L Jones
Archaeology
At UNM since 2012Email: elj@unm.eduCurriculum vitae Website/s: http://www.unm.edu/~elj/?_gl=1*1y7breb*_gcl_au*NDA0NjQ3NTIxLjE2OTU3NTk3ODk.
Recent Courses:
Archaeological Method and Theory, Anth 1211
Anthropology of Heritage, Anth 381/581
Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Anth 523
Stone Age Europe, Anth 325/525
History and Theory of Archaeology, Anth 574
Zooarchaeology, Anth 484/584
Education:
BA, Vassar College (1996)
MA, University of Washington (2001)
PhD, University of Washington (2004)
Dissertation: "Broad spectrum diets and the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus): Dietary change during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the Dordogne, Southwestern France"
Research:
Human-environment interactions, historical biogeography, zooarchaeology, animal domestication and human adaptation, public archaeology and community outreach.
Current research projects include:
Horses and human societies in the Americas
The Columbian exchange and long-term environmental change in central New Mexico
People, animals, and the domestication spectrum in the Ancestral Pueblo world
Refugia, environmental hotspots, climate change, and demography in the Eurasian Paleolithic and Mesolithic
Recent Publications:
Jones, Emily Lena, Scott Kirk, Caitlin S. Ainsworth, Asia Alsgaard, Jana Valesca Meyer, and Cyler Conrad (in press) The community at the crossroads: artiodactyl exploitation and socio-environmental connectivity at Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581). KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History. https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2021.1963576. See also https://news.unm.edu/news/unm-anthropology-team-analyzes-life-in-pueblo-at-crossroads
Jones, Emily Lena and Jacob L. Fisher, editors (2022). Questioning Rebound: People and Environmental Change in the Protohistoric and Early Historic Americas. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/questioning-rebound/
Jones, Emily Lena, Laura Steele, and Cyler Conrad (2022). Archaeological data suggest seventeenth century presence of Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) in the Central New Mexico Rio Grande. Western North American Naturalist 82(4).
Carvalho, Milena, Emily Lena Jones, M. Grace Ellis, João Cascalheira, Nuno Bicho, David Meiggs, Michael Benedetti, Lukas Friedl, and Jonathan Haws (2022) Neanderthal paleoecology in the late Middle Paleolithic of western Iberia: A stable isotope analysis of ungulate teeth from Lapa do Picareiro (Portugal). Journal of Quaternary Science 37(2):300-319. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3363
Conrad, Cyler, Rasmi Shoocongdej, Ben Marwick, Joyce C. White,Cholawit Thongcharoenchaikit, Charles Higham, James K. Feathers, Sakboworn Tumpeesuwan, Cristina Castillo, Dorian Fuller, and Emily Lena Jones (2022) Radiocarbon and Luminescence Dating of Spirit Cave, Steep Cliff Cave and Banyan Valley Cave in Northwest Thailand. Antiquity 96(386):280-297. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.44
*Dombrosky, Jonathan, Thomas F. Turner, *Alexandra Harris, and Emily Lena Jones (2022). Body size from unconventional specimens: A 3D geometric morphometrics approach to fishes from Ancestral Pueblo contexts. Journal of Archaeological Science 142:105600. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2022.105600. See also https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-archaeological-science/news/article-spotlight-for-volume-142
Jones, Emily Lena (2022). Why so many birds? Understanding human-bird interactions during the Pueblo IV Middle Rio Grande of New Mexico. Archaeology Southwest 35(1-2):14-15.
Jones, Emily Lena (2022). What is a refugium? Questions for the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition in peninsular southern Europe. Journal of Quaternary Science 37(2):136-141. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3274
Carvalho, Milena, Emily Lena Jones, Ana Belen Marín-Arroyo, Jeanne-Marie Geiling, Manuel R. González Morales, and Lawrence Guy Straus (2021). Initial and Lower Magdalenian Large Mammal Faunas and Human Subsistence at El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain). Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology 4(2):15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-021-00084-7
Taylor, William Timothy Treal, Isaac Hart, Emily Lena Jones, Joan Brenner-Coltrain, Jessica Thompson Jobe, Brooks B. Britt, H. Gregory McDonald, Yue Li, Chengrui Zhang, Petrus Le Roux, Carlton Quinn Shield Chief Gover, Stéphanie Schiavinato, Ludovic Orlando and Patrick Roberts (2021) Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Lehi Horse: Implications for Early Historic Horse Cultures of the North American West. American Antiquity 86(3):465-485. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2020.109. See also https://www.colorado.edu/today/2021/02/04/horse-remains-reveal-new-insights-how-native-peoples-raised-horses
Taylor, William T. T., Jinping Cao, Chengrui Zhang, Helena Miton, Igor Chechushkov, Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, Robert Cook, Emily Lena Jones, Enkhbayar Mijiddorj, Tserendorj Odbaatar, Chinbold Bayandelger, Barbara Morrison, and Bryan Miller (2021) Understanding early horse transport in eastern Eurasia through damage to the equine dentition. Antiquity 95(384): 1478-1494. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.146
Conrad, Cyler, *Eden Franz, Ernestene Green, and Emily Lena Jones (2020). New Radiocarbon Dates from Prehistoric Non Nok Tha, Don Kok Pho and Don Pa Daeng, Upper Nam Phong Watershed, Khon Kaen Province, Northeast Thailand. Archaeological Research in Asia 24:100233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2020.100233
Mattson, Hannah, and Emily Lena Jones (2020). Material signs and relational meanings: reconsidering Ancestral Pueblo material dichotomies. World Archaeology 52(3):412-428. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.1909494
Jones, Emily Lena, William Timothy Treal Taylor, Juan Bautista Belardi, Gustavo Neme, Adolfo Gil, Patrick Roberts, Cassidee Thornhill, Gregory W. L. Hodgins, and Ludovic Orlando (2019). Caballos y humanos en el nuevo mundo: investigaciones arqueológicas en América del Norte y perspectivas para Argentina. Anales de Arqueología y Etnología 74(2): 247-268. http://revistas.uncu.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/analarqueyetno/article/view/3741
Jones, Emily Lena (2019). Revisiting the Cantabrian Solutrean: the archaeofaunal record. Chapter 17 in Human Adaptations to the Last Glacial Maximum: the Solutrean and its Neighbors, Isabell Schmidt and João Cascalheira, editors. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, pp. 323-343.
CV: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://anthropology.unm.edu/people/faculty/profile/jones_cv-1-web.pdf
Jones, Emily NAHIA Holiday House (Teen None) $18.99 4, 15 ISBN: 9780823458356
In a world inspired by prehistoric Europe, a teen girl is stripped of her status when she insists that her people must change their traditions in order to survive.
Nahia, who's proud of her "first daughter" status in the Sea People's matriarchal culture, struggles to remain silent as food grows scarce and people repeat tales of violent bands of strangers. Despite her twin sister Izara's pleas, Nahia questions their mother the headwoman's leadership and is sent to live with shaman Eneko on the camp's fringes. Heartbroken Nahia grows to admire Eneko and travels with him to his home in a mountain valley. Eneko and Hodei, a woman shaman from the Salamander People, teach Nahia to use vision-inducing plants. When one of her visions reveals that the Sea People may have been taken by marauders, Nahia knows she must return to the coast even though she'll desperately miss Eneko. But upon finding her band, Nahia is astonished to discover her sister is happy living among the agricultural invaders, and she must reassess her judgment of what's best for the Sea People's survival. Archaeologist Jones' fiction debut incorporates details about the material culture and practices of the peoples of the European Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Nahia's first-person narration brings immediacy to the narrative although some dialogue feels calculated to educate readers, slowing the pace. Nahia's people typically have brown skin, blue eyes, and dark hair.
An interesting story unfolding in an unusual setting. (family tree, historical notes)(Fiction. 13-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Jones, Emily: NAHIA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A825128328/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d9fd81e8. Accessed 28 July 2025.
Nahia
Emily Jones. Holiday House, $18.99 (304p)
ISBN 978-0-823-45835-6
Neolithic colonists threaten Mesolithic foragers' way of life in archaeologist Jones's enthralling, fantasy-tinged debut, set in prehistoric Northern Spain. Food is scarce at the Sea People's winter camp, so when a passing traveler tells stories of invading strangers abducting women, slaughtering men, and building settlements, teenager Nahia takes it as a sign and urges her mother, headwoman Abene, to move their band inland. Abene refuses to abandon her ancestors' territory, however, and reacts to Nahia's insolence by replacing Nahia as first daughter with her twin, Izara, and apprenticing Nahia to visiting shaman Eneko. Feeling ostracized and fearing Abene's pride could prove fatal, Nahia accompanies Eneko when he returns to his mountain valley home. There, she finds love, magic, and purpose. But when visions suggest Abene and Izara are in peril, Nahia must decide whether to sacrifice her future to save the family that rejected her. Jones's tale unfolds from Nahia's perspective in candid, vulnerable first-person narration. Obstacles are easily overcome, but thoughtful examinations of gender roles and clashing cultural philosophies add complexity and infuse history with heart. The concluding author's note illuminates and informs. Most characters have brown skin. Ages 14-up. (Apr.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Nahia." Publishers Weekly, vol. 272, no. 2, 13 Jan. 2025, p. 59. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A828299942/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=21fc006e. Accessed 28 July 2025.