Tamas Polanyi

I am an anthropological archaeologist with experience in archaeological research and cultural resources management primarily in the US and Hungary. In 2020, I founded Sandbox Archaeology to closer align my work with my passion by creating an innovation sandbox. With Sandbox Archaeology, I am mostly engaged in developing innovative approaches for integrated cultural and natural resources management that has the capacity to effectively respond to evolving expectations of the industry within the context of large-scale economic transformations and environmental degradation derivative of climate change. Moving beyond innovation, my goal is to find ways in which novel and technologically enhanced approaches can become part of established standards and protocols within the industry and related regulatory environments for more effective detection, protection, and preservation of finite resources of the past.

As a Research Affiliate at the Department of Anthropology, UC Davis, I am involved in a project funded by the Templeton Foundation (PI Cristina Moya and Julio A. Quispe) set out to examine the adoption of new religious and ritual behaviors in the Peruvian Altiplano. Complementary to the ethnographic research I am developing an ethnoarchaeological approach to explore material, spatial, and historical circumstances of pilgrimage. As a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, I am participating in an NSF-funded project to study cultural and ecological consequences of colonialism in Dominica (PI Diane Wallman). Combining geophysical methods with LiDAR survey and geological assessment, I attempt to model cultural and natural formation processes vis-a-vis the development and abandonment of a trading post.