Earning her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1978, she then taught at San Jose State University for six years, and joined the anthropology faculty of SUNY-Binghamton in 1977, where she also served as co-director of Women's Studies. She accepted an associate professorship in anthropology at Berkeley in 1987. Alongside her fieldwork, other research topics and publications have addressed pedagogy and the teaching of archaeology; the development and use of internet resources in the teaching of Introduction to Archaeology (having received several instructional technology grants for this); as well as initiating and implementing an archaeology outreach program in local schools.