Kjersti Emerson’s research involves prehistoric ceramic technologies in Illinois and the Midwest spanning Early Woodland through Protohistoric time periods. Her primary interests are focused on Upper Mississippian/Oneota groups in northern Illinois in the 13th through 16th centuries; namely, the Upper Mississippian Langford, Fisher, and Huber phases that prehistorically occupied the Chicago region.

Emerson, Thomas E., Kristin M. Hedman, Matthew A. Fort, and Kjersti E. Emerson (2022) Late Precolumbian Subsistence Change, Socio-Political Transformation, and Ethnogenesis in the Upper Illinois River Valley In Following the Mississippian Spread, edited by Robert Cook and Aaron Comstock. Springer.

Esarey, Duane E. and Kjersti E. Emerson, eds. (2021) The Palos Site: An Early Seventeenth-Century Ancestral Ho-Chunk Occupation in the Chicago Area. Illinois State Archaeological Survey Studies in Archaeology No. 14, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.

Conrad, Lawrence A., Kjersti E. Emerson, Thomas E. Emerson, and Duane E. Esarey, eds. (2019) Orendorf Settlement D: A Burned Fortified Mississippian Town in the Central Illinois River Valley. Illinois State Archaeological Survey Research Report No. 50, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.

Kjersti E. Emerson (2017) Spatial and Temporal Variation in Fisher Phase Ceramics. Illinois Archaeology 29:253-286.

Emerson, Kjersti E. and Madeleine G. Evans (2015) Late Prehistory at the Zimmerman Site: The Huber occupation of Grid B. In Protohistory at the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia: The Illinois country on the eve of colony, edited by Robert F. Mazrim, pp. 103-114. Illinois State Archaeological Survey Studies in Archaeology No. 10, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.

Emerson, Thomas E. and Kjersti E. Emerson (2014) Late Fisher Phase Ceramics at the Hoxie Farm Fortified Village. In The Hoxie Farm Site Fortified Village: Late Fisher Phase Occupation and Fortification in South Chicago, edited by Douglas K. Jackson and Thomas  E. Emerson, pp. 245-326. Illinois State Archaeological Survey Research Report No. 27, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.