Thanks for the reply bioarch_fan! Thanks for the heads up on the two schools. I hadn't contacted Verano yet, so that is good to know, but I did see another post of yours somewhere about Dr. Martin and the need of violence-centered research. Luckily, one of my big interests is population-level skeletal indicators of environmental stress (i.e. violence, workload, and malnutrition), so I'll definitely take that angle with that application! I have looked at Dr. Ryan Harrod, as I've seen his book, but the thought of grad school in Alaska is so very depressing. I've been trying to escape Michigan's winters for 21 years! As far as a region, I would love to keep my research in the Maya region, although I'm open to others. I absolutely love the people down there (the modern ones that is!), I'm fascinated with the culture, and all of my fieldwork and lab research has focused on the Maya (I did my fieldschool in Belize this summer). I can definitely see the avenue and need for research like this down there. Strontium isotope analysis and mobility are big down there right now, and a huge interest of mine, not to mention the multitude of endemic warfare and collapse theories revolving around environmental stress and/or climate change. I'd love any other suggestions you end up thinking of. My interests are pretty broad, so I'm not 100% focused on the bioarchaeology of climate change, on the widest scale I'm just interested in the human-environment interaction as seen in the skeletal record. My top choice right now is Brown, with Dr. Andrew Scherer. He does a lot of work with the intersection of landscape archaeology and bioarchaeology, and recently on mortuary landscapes. I think bringing an environmental aspect to his approaches would be very revealing.