Laurie A. Wilkie is an historical archaeologist who completed her undergraduate work at Syracuse University and her MA and PhD at UCLA. She taught in southern Louisiana, where she has began her research on Mardi Gras celebrations, a project that has stretched over two decades. She joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Wilkie is author of Creating Freedom (LSU Press: 2000), The Archaeology of Mothering (Routledge: 2003), Sampling Many Pots (with Paul Farnsworth, University of Florida Press: 2005), and the The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi (University of California Press: 2010). Her books have twice won James Deetz Book Award from the Society for Historical Archaeology, as well as the James Mooney Book Award from the Society of Southern Anthropology, and honourable mention for the Victor Turner Ethnographic Writing prize.