Kendall Hills

My current research explores issues of statecraft and imperialism with particular empahsis on the dynamic relationships between the imperial core and provincial intermediate elites. Through the lens of monumentality, I investigate the level of imperial control and intermediate elite power within the Angkorian Khmer Empire (9^th- 15^thcentury CE).  While empires certainly relied on state-sponsored building projects to produce networks of imperial control and ideology on the landscape, shifts in the way that imperial architectural models were enacted by provincial intermediate elites may reflect local agency and identity, resistance, and degrees of socio-political autonomy.

PhD Candidate, University of Illinois at Chicago
MA, Trent University, 2012
BA, University of Toronto, 2008

Field Museum Women in Science

Graduate Anthropology and Geography Association

Society for American Archaeology

Nizioloek, Lisa C., Gary M. Feinman, Peter J. Gayford, and Kendall Hills

2018   Ceramics and Socioeconomic Change: A Case Study Using the 12th-13th Century Java Sea Shipwreck. Paper presented at the 21st Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, Hue, Vietnam.

Hills, Kendall B.

2018   Networks of Power: Sandstone Temple Production in the Provinces of the Angkorian Khmer Empire. Invited paper presented at the 83rd Annual Society for American Archaeology, Washington D.C., USA.

Macrae, Scott, Kendall B. Hills, and Gyles Iannone

2017   Historical-Political Ecology in Belize’s North Vaca Plateau. Invited paper presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Archaeology Association, Ottawa-Gatineau, Ontario/Québec, Canada.

Hills, Kendall B.

2017   Investigating the Socio-Ecological Entanglement of Integrative Mechanisms among the Charter States of South and Southeast Asia. Invited paper presented at the 82nd Annual Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Hills, Kendall B.

2016   Temples in the Tropics: Exploring the Study of Monumentality and its use as an Integrative Mechanism among the Maya and the Khmer. Invited paper presented at the 10th Annual Maya at the Playa Conference, Flagler County, Florida, USA.

Hills, Kendall B.

2016   Investigating Integrative Mechanisms among Early Tropical States. Invited paper presented at the 81st Annual Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida, USA.

Hills, Kendall B.

2016   An Archaeological Perspective on State Integration Mechanisms during the South and Southeast Asian “Charter Era”. Paper presented at the 2016 Second City Anthropological Conference, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Hills, Kendall B.

2014   Place-making at Minanha: A Contextual Analysis of Epicentral Material Culture. Paper presented at the 79th Annual Society for American Archaeology, Austin, Texas, USA.

Hills, Kendall B., Sonja A. Schwake, Carmen McCane, and Gyles Iannone

2013   A Tale of Three Houselots: Identity and the Rise and Fall of the Minanha City-State.  Paper presented at the 11th Annual Belize Archaeology and Anthropology Symposium, San Ignacio, Belize.

Schwake, Sonja A., Gyles Iannone, Kendall Hills, and Esther Beauregard

2012   Preliminary Excavations at the Minor Center of Martinez, Cayo District, Belize. Paper presented at the 77th Annual Society for American Archaeology, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

Hills, Kendall

2011   From Space to Place: A Developmental Analysis of the Epicentral Court Complex at the Ancient Maya Center of Minanha, Belize. Paper presented at the 76th Annual Society for American Archaeology, Sacramento, California, USA.