Staff and Board

Jessica leads the administration and development efforts of our unique organization. She earned her B.A. in Archaeology at Texas A&M University, where she studied under Dr. Carolyn Boyd and wrote an undergraduate thesis on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos. She went on to work in museum administration at the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution and then in archaeological tourism at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, CO. After achieving her Master’s degree in Geography at the University of Texas at Austin, she entered the corporate world. She served for eight years as a Consultant in the Communications and Change Management Practice at Towers Watson—an international professional services firm. She joined the Shumla Board of Directors in January 2013, taking on the roles of Board Secretary and Chair of the Marketing and Development Committee.

Back when Jessica was starting out in college and studying with Carolyn, she got a front row seat to the founding of Shumla in 1998. In fact, she was Shumla’s second employee, acting as Assistant to the Director until she graduated in 2000. After her important experiences working in both the worlds of archaeology and business, in 2015 she was ready to come full circle to take on the role of Shumla Executive Director. 

Dr. Karen L. Steelman is the director of Shumla’s new ¹⁴C plasma oxidation laboratory and a key member of Shumla’s Research Leadership Team. Trained as an archaeological chemist, Dr. Steelman is a leading international rock art researcher with over 40 peer-reviewed archaeology publications. Prior to joining the staff at Shumla, Dr. Steelman was a Full Professor of Chemistry at the University of Central Arkansas, having taught there for over 12 years. She was a long time friend and collaborator with the Shumla team. We were thrilled to add her to the staff in January 2017.

Karen received a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas and a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Under the mentorship of Dr. Marvin W. Rowe (another long-time researcher in the Lower Pecos), Karen had the opportunity to blend her two interests – physical science and archaeology. As a recipient of a Watson Fellowship, Karen also studied art conservation at museums in Costa Rica, Chile, Australia, and Great Britain. Karen uses chemical analyses to identify pigments used by ancient artists and to radiocarbon date ancient rock paintings. Her methods include portable x-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, plasma oxidation, and accelerator mass spectrometry.

In 1998, artist-turned-archaeologist Dr. Carolyn Boyd, founded an organization to preserve, study and share the unique and endangered ancient art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. Since then, Shumla has been a center of archaeological research, heritage preservation, community outreach and education for students of all ages.

Dr. Boyd received her PhD from Texas A&M University. She serves as the Shumla Endowed Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University and as a member of the Shumla Board of Directors. In this role, she is part of the Shumla Research Leadership Team, acting as ex officio Head of Research. She is the author of Rock Art of the Lower Pecos, published in 2003 by Texas A&M University Press and The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative, published by the University of Texas Press in the fall of 2016 and winner of the 2017 Society for American Archaeology Scholarly Book Award. She has been published in numerous peer reviewed journals, such as Antiquity, American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, Revista Iberoamericana de Lingüística, and Archaeometry and has contributed chapters in several edited volumes. Boyd gives numerous lectures around the country and abroad, and serves on graduate committees.