Gail Williams Wertz

Education

Gail is no stranger to William & Mary. Completing a B.S. in biology on our campus and a Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Gail had a successful career as a researcher and professor in biomedical work at the University of North Carolina Medical School and at the University of Virginia Medical School. Gail’s hard work resulted in more than 155 refereed publications in the study of virology and the development of vaccines, including the successful vaccine platform for the deadly Ebola virus. However, Gail’s interest in the untapped archaeological resources of Virginia’s Rappahannock River Valley, led her to become a full-time graduate student in anthropology and to a new direction in her career.

 A 2020 graduate of William & Mary, with an M.A. in Historical Archaeology, Gail’s research examines long-term change in Indigenous settlement in Virginia's Rappahannock River Valley and its underlying causes during the Archaic Period (10,000- 3000 BP).  In this region Native American tribes, such as the Rappahannock Indian Tribe of Virginia, lost nearly all their land holdings and suffered devastating population losses, due to settler colonialism. Lands occupied by Indigenous people through millennia, along with a great deal of Native material culture, now belong to colonial descendants or subsequent purchasers.

Work

Gail focuses on the previously unstudied lithic collections in private hands and initiated collaborations with responsible collectors.  She collaborated with farmers living along the Rappahannock River to evaluate their large holdings of lithic collections to corroborate Indigenous narratives of occupation, population demography and cultural change during the Archaic Period.  Gail is aware of the challenges, benefits and ethics of collaborating with collectors. Her work is done in consultation with the Rappahannock Tribe who hold the artifacts and the information content of such collections as important for their history.

Gail will work on a variety of research projects at the AIRC.