Archaeology is a way of seeing the world through the lens of change over time. It differs from history in that archaeology’s primary evidence is strewn across landscapes, found at sites that contain artifacts. Written documents are secondary to the material remains, which often contradict official accounts and provide unintentional records of what has occurred.
I use archaeology to understand how the present came to be and to question what the future can and should be like. For most of my career, I have explored the relatively recent past of North America. In 2025, I am excited to be undertaking a Fulbright Scholar project in Austria.
Research
When archaeologists excavate a site they begin with the uppermost or most recent layers and slowly uncover what came before.
My current research is on the system of county poorhouses that operated in New York State from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s. Understanding the institutionalization of the poor and homeless is especially important in 2024 because New York is creating new rules that might force people into institutions yet again. When citizens do not know the history of past attempts to “reform” the homeless they are missing important information for understanding how and why poorhouses failed in the past.
A project that I recently completed was the co-authoring of a book manuscript on the archaeology of American protests. It explores the history and archaeology of protesting in the United States from the very beginning of the nation’s founding. Investigating the materiality of where protests occur and what things are used to create, manage, and stop protests a different understanding of the way protest has functioned in America can emerge. Americans have been fighting for equality, prosperity, and self determination for centuries. Contemporary struggles are connected to, and in some cases direct extensions of, those undertaken by our ancestors.
Published in the winter of 2022/2023, my book Taking Our Water for the City: The Archaeology of New York City’s Watershed Communities describes a decade-long research project on the impacts of just two New York City reservoirs on the towns that they are located in. New York City gets its water from 19 reservoirs and controlled lakes. Each has its own history of land takings and imposed regulations on communities. The overall message of the book is that city water is not free. Those who pay the greatest price are not the users but the source communities.
To dig deeper into my previous research, use the link below.
Teaching
My full time job is that of a professor of anthropology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. In North America, archaeology is a subfield of anthropology because the subject of our work is humanity.
Every academic year I teach introduction to archaeology with a focus on method, theory, and application. I do not teach a survey of world archaeology as doing so is more about the past than about how the past creates and informs upon the present. In recent years, the two main case studies covered in introduction to archaeology are Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site near St. Louis and the archaeology of outer space. Most students are unaware of Cahokia and its amazing history as a major urban center for Indigenous people long before colonists arrived. They are equally unaware of current governmental decisions about lunar mining and the accumulation of “space junk” above the earth. These two case studies show how the past and the future can impact our understanding of the present.
I teach several other courses on a rotating basis. Museums, Collections, and Ethics is a very popular course on the history of collecting and the ethics of taking important objects and human bodies from other peoples and places. At the start of the course, students review any online museum exhibit of their choice and consider the ethics of what is included. After reviewing many case studies and the relevant laws, regulations, and ethical codes of professional organizations, they create an object biography of a single object to dig deeper into how and why it was made and how and why it is displayed. Every object has a past, and most objects in museums were made to be used not preserved.
To dig deeper into my teaching, use the link below.
Local Heritage
I believe that knowing and sharing local heritage helps create and sustain communities. Wherever I live, I become involved in local heritage to both serve and nurture the communities around me.
Upon arriving at Vassar College, I began working with students to uncover the Indigenous history of the campus. This work was not only interesting but became central to the college’s compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). I created a story map to capture the map-based historical record of who has inhabited this landscape. This map data compliments the histories that our local Native American tribes have maintained for generations as well as the archaeological record of past land use. In the 2025-2026 academic year I plan to return to this line of inquiry and work with students on creating a robust understanding on the land use history of the Vassar Farm and Ecological Preserve.
I have come to appreciate how local folklore serves to maintain aspects of local history, even when the stories are incomplete or mostly untrue. Two main components of local lore are places that have been deemed “haunted” and the ghost stories of those places. I spent a decade actively studying ghost hunting through participation in ghost hunts and by leading my own. I compiled the ghost stories of Vassar College and lead walking ghost tours of campus by request.
To dig deeper into my local heritage work, use the link below.
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