Dr. Cahue has been a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, where she conducted postdoctoral research with Dr. Mark R. Schurr as an NSF Minority Research Postdoctoral Fellow.

Dr. Cahue received her Ph.D. (2001) from the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University. Her dissertation, titled "The Effect of Environmental Change and Economic Power on the Diet of Tarascan Elites" examined the relationship between environment, food availability and political and economic processes, and the effect that it has on human biology. Dr. Cahue uses biogeochemical data derived from stable isotopes of bone collagen to compare the diets of Pre-Tarascan and Tarascan elite skeletal samples, and examines indicators of nutritional stress on skeletal and dental remains to assess the health status of these populations.

She has taught anthropology courses at Michigan State University and Central Michigan University. Dr. Cahue has been conducting field research in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, in the modern state of Michoacán since 1990, and more recently in the Mascota Valley of Jalisco, in West Mexico. Her research orientation is driven by a biocultural approach that considers the context of human biology to include political-economic factors and power dynamics. Within this framework, she seeks to understand the biological and cultural responses of human populations to unstable environments. She is interested in building a theoretical link between the cultural and the biological that is more analytical than descriptive, and believes that power dynamics can forge that link. In addition to her dissertation research, Dr. Cahue has been active in developing a research agenda in bioarchaeology that focuses on human adaptation in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin and adjacent highland lake environments. She is also extending her dissertation research to studies of living populations to obtain data upon which to build a theory of biocultural adaptation, power and environmental vulnerability for the region.

Over the next three to four years, Dr. Cahue will analyze several major west Mexican skeletal collections. As the principal investigator for the osteological analysis of the skeletal remains, she will conduct her own research and direct graduate and undergraduate students from Mexican and U.S. institutions. These projects were carefully selected to address critical issues related to the role economic interactions played in west Mexican prehistory.

• EL PANTANO

In Jalisco, she will be collaborating with Dr. Joseph Mountjoy (UNC-Greensboro) and Dr. David Weaver (Wake Forest U) in the continued excavation and analysis of the burial site of El Pantano, an early agricultural village in the town of Mascota.

• DIET AND HEALTH IN THE SAYULA BASIN

In a collaborative study with investigators from the Centro Regional INAH-Guadalajara and the Instituto de Estudios del Hombre at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Dr. Cahue will analyze skeletal collections from El Tasajillo and La Caseta, two sites in the Sayula Basin as part of the Sayula Basin Project.

• THE OSSUARY OF TZINTZUNTZAN

In the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin she will collaborate with Drs. Helen P. Pollard, (Michigan State University) and Arturo Oliveros (Centro Regional INAH-Michoacán), as a co-principal investigator in the excavation of the ossuary in the Archaeological Zone of Tzintzuntzan, the capital city of the Tarascan state. In addition, she will conduct a study of the diet and health of the skeletal remains from the shaft tombs from El Opeño.