I have served as PSU’s NAGPRA Coordinator since 2021. In this role, I work to identify all Native American Ancestors and cultural items held at PSU, and repatriate them to their descendants and affiliated Native American Tribes (more on NAGPRA at PSU). I also serve as PSU’s liaison to the Governor’s Task Force on Oregon Tribal Cultural Items, which seeks to provide Oregon’s nine Tribes information about the Tribal cultural items that are held by public institutions.
I am an archaeologist by training, with a speciality in the analysis of animal remains in general and fishes in particular. I have been fortunate to work on lab and field projects in California, west Africa, the American Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, Aotearoa / New Zealand, and the Marquesas Islands. I have active research interests in the archaeology of fisheries and human-environment relationships in Aotearoa and the Pacific Northwest.
Selected Publications:
- Nims, Reno, Caitlin Smith, and Matthew Campbell. 2026. Otolith Stable Isotopes and Māori Archaeology: Marine Paleoclimate Data for Northern Aotearoa New Zealand. Journal of Pacific Archaeology, 16(2). https://10.70460/jpa.v16i2.398
- Nims, Reno, Patricia Pillay, and Melinda S. Allen. 2024. Mass Capture Fishing in the Marquesas Islands. Archaeology in Oceania, 59(2):234-250. https://doi.org/10.1002/arco.5320
- Nims, Reno, Darby Filimoehala, Melinda S. Allen, and Virginia L. Butler. 2020. When Less is More: Element Selection as Sampling Strategy in Zooarchaeology. Journal of Archaeological Science, 121:105205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105205
- Nims, Reno and Virginia L. Butler. 2019. Increasing the Robustness of Meta-Analysis through Life History and Middle Range Models: An Example from the Northeast Pacific. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 26:581–618. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-018-9383-1
- Nims, Reno and Virginia L. Butler. 2019. The Sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) of Čḯxwicən: Socioenvironmental Lessons from an Unusually Abundant Species. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. 23:1187–1196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2018.06.028