he 2025 recipient of the ACUA & RECON Offshore Student Travel Award is Dorian Lee Record. Dorian is a second-year master’s student at the East Carolina University Program in Maritime Studies working with ACUA Chair, Dr. Jennifer McKinnon. She is proud to have built her foundations in archaeology while earning her B.A. in Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Dorian has been an avid diver since 2013 and is excited to be honing her diving and archaeology skills with the guidance of expert faculty at ECU. Some of Dorian’s research interests include colonial and post-colonial Latin America, ceramics, restorative justice and community-based approaches to archaeology, and oral history. Her master’s thesis is on Tonalá Bruñida, a ceramic ware originating from central Mexico. Tonalá Bruñida was a key commodity in the Spanish colonial maritime trade system and an object of dietary consumption among upper-class Spanish women of the period. When not studying, working, or diving, Dorian enjoys practicing her hobbies such as art, music, and cooking, and spending time with friends and family.

Dorian Record is the 2025 ACUA & RECON Offshore DEI Award winner
Please join us in welcoming Dorian for her presentation: Búcarofagia: Preliminary Investigations on the Consumption of Tonalá Bruñida Ware
Tonalá Bruñida is an Indigenous Mexican ceramic ware that originated in the late colonial period and is still in production today. This ware is distinguished by its paste, made from a combination of two clays native to the Tonalá region, by a distinct slip which produces a specific scent when in contact with water, and by a meticulous process of burnishing. Tonalá Bruñida was eaten and consumed in high volumes as a luxury commodity among the elite classes of Spain. In fact, it grew to such significance that it was shipped in great quantities whole and in sherds for distribution among the upper classes across Europe, as evidenced by its extensive presence on multiple shipwrecks of the period. This paper presents preliminary results of a project investigating the nutritional and cultural values associated with the geophagia and cultural commodification that inspired the extensive maritime export of an Indigenous ceramic product.