Chronicle Geoarchaeologist Featured on Keen on Green Podcast
Sep 4, 2026
Dr. Heidi Luchsinger, Geoarchaeologist and Senior Director of Project Management at Chronicle Heritage, was recently featured on the Keen on Green podcast.
Dr. Luchsinger discusses her academic and professional journey as a geoarchaeologist and why she turned from academia to cultural resources management (CRM). She also addresses the current threats to Section 106, her favorite reading on geoarchaeology, and how performing a hundreds of miles long cultural resources project in the dead of winter in the frozen tundra of Minnesota convinced her that the CRM field was where she belonged.
Dr. Luchsinger shares a smile of relief toward the end of six months of solo fieldwork in 2005 for finally reconstructing the Late Pleistocene and Holocene landscape history of a 150 kilometer segment of the largest river crossing in Patagonia, Argentina, and determining where archaeological sites should be buried and where they are likely absent. Dr. Luchsinger integrated her work with her Argentinian colleague, Archaeologist Dr. Luciano Prates, who conducted surveys and excavations in this same study region.
Dr. Luchsinger’s crew during downtime on a spoils pile in northern Minnesota in 2021 where the team was monitoring pipeline construction. “Since we had some time to spare, I handed out all my lighted hand lenses and explained how to begin analysis of sediments in the field,” Dr. Luchsinger said.
On her drive back from the SAAs in 2025 in Denver, Dr. Luchsinger stopped at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers just north of St. Louis. “The Missouri River is over my right shoulder and the Mississippi River is over my left shoulder. I find confluences fascinating both for the archaeology and the geomorphology, where both are highly complex,” she said.
Dr. Luchsinger hand augering in 2024 during excavation at the Pozzobon I site on the coast of Northern Patagonia with her Argentinian colleague Dr. Gustavo Martinez. Dr. Luchsinger reconstructed the regional landscape history for the Holocene, taking into account significant changes in the coastline due to sea level transgression along an approximately 200-mile-wide portion of the eastern continental shelf.
Southern Patagonia in 2022 after completing a survey of the Mack Aike valley, the southernmost drainage in continental South America. During survey, Dr. Luchsinger hand-augered and collected radiocarbon samples. She collaborated with a team of Argentinian archaeologists to integrate the archaeological record they had surveyed and excavated into the Late Pleistocene-Holocene landscape history of the valley, which Dr. Luchsinger reconstructed based on her fieldwork and research.
Additional stories and insights shared include:
How Dr. Luchsinger formed the Society of American Archaeology’s first-ever Geoarchaeology Task Force, which resulted in the writing of a Deep Testing Statement approved by the SAA Board: Geoarchaeology Task Force: Statement on Deep Testing (2025)
Her experience performing archaeology in South America, specifically in Patagonia, Argentina
Her time as a professor at East Carolina University
Taking the leap and taking a chance on an opportunity, even if it’s not the perfect time to do so
“When you really care about something, you’ll do what you need to do to make it work,” Dr. Luchsinger said during the podcast.
