1.5: Descendant Community Voices

Alexandra Martin, Ph.D., Strawbery Banke Museum

Paulina Przystupa, Ph.D., Alexandria Archive Institute

April Kamp-Whittaker, Ph.D., California State University, Chico

Dana Shew, Ph.D., Sonoma State University

(with case studies by Riley Freeman, M.A., Matthew P. Rooney, Ph.D., and James Macrae, M.A.)

Learning Objectives

• Describe the benefits of working with descendant communities from the perspectives of both archaeologists and community members
• Discuss examples of archaeological projects working with Indigenous communities, descendants of the African Diaspora, Anglo-European descent communities, European-immigrant descent communities, Asian descent communities, and Hispanic descent communities
• Discuss examples of contemporary archaeology, including archaeologies of migration and transience

There are a wide variety of resources for archaeologists to use to understand the past (Harrington 1955; Little 2007), and one of the most important is descendant communities. While historical events can change in the memory of individuals over their lives, the interplay between archaeology and historical memory ensures that archaeologists who analyze such sites be cognizant of their position in the eyes of a public that may have multiple, possibly contradictory, narratives regarding archaeological events and sites (Blakey 2008). In North America, this means expanding the number of voices at the table by acknowledging and consulting the many communities impacted by archaeological excavation and study. In this chapter, we explore how myriad descendant communities are involved in these endeavors and how their interests are part of archaeological practice.

Archaeology is very useful for understanding localized production and groups of people by its focus on a particular place or community. This allows us to look at how small groups of people shared, or did not share, power. We can study how these smaller groups of people have power over other groups, whether locally or in a national context. We can also use them to explore the questions particular communities have for their own places or histories to understand the endurance of their community in the area. Potential research themes include: revisions of the historical record (Blanton 2000), community-based research questions (Blakey 2008), and the archaeology of confinement (Kamp-Whittaker and Clark 2019).

Figure 1 – The New York African Burial Ground. Plaque reads “For all those who were lost; For all those who were stolen; For all those who were left behind; For all those who were not forgotten.” (Photo by Alexandra Martin)

Examining questions at the local scale for archaeology is important because it gives us more detail on the history of a particular community. For example, the African Burial Ground (Figure 1) gives us a glimpse of the health impacts of enslavement overall (Barrett and Blakey 2011) but it also tells the story of one of the first African American communities in North America. Their story is specific to their place, which is why it’s important on projects like that to involve descendant communities and to help them to understand their own history. The same can be said of the importance of descendant and still living Japanese-American communities (Fujita 2018). Using archaeological methods, specific details about life at the internment camps were revealed but this information is made more useful and important by involving the communities who lived through or are impacted by that struggle today. Additionally, these stories are important because they are not recorded anywhere except in the archaeological record. Historically, those writing history in the United States focused on their own lives. The stories of common people, such as later European immigrants, enslaved Africans, and Asian-descent North Americans, have been considered not important to the narrative of the continent, even if they were.

Although questions about historical archaeology at the local scale have created robust datasets for many areas, there are more developing avenues. One of these is archaeologists’ interest in combating localized problems, such as housing insecurity (Zimmerman et al. 2010). While an issue in many parts of North America, each population’s geography, specific history, and the economy of their area impact what a successful solution would look like and archaeological methods help to craft that unique solution.

Indigenous Communities

Native North American communities are integral to many archaeological projects. In New England, a number of collaborative projects have made important contributions to understanding Indigenous history by examining reservations in New England, for example among the Eastern Pequot, the Mashantucket Pequot, the Mohegan, and the Narragansett Tribes (e.g., Cipolla and Quinn 2016; Jones and McBride 2006; McBride 1990; Robinson et al. 2002; Silliman 2009).

One example of a positive relationship among archaeologists, Tribal officials, and descendant community members is the recent Mohegan Archaeological Field School series in southern Connecticut, led by field school director Craig Cipolla and Mohegan THPO (Tribal Historic Preservation Officer) and Archaeology Program Manager James Quinn, the first Mohegan Tribal member to serve as the Tribe’s THPO. The field school is run under the authority of the Mohegan Council of Elders, and with the support of Tribal leadership. Cipolla and Quinn write that their fieldwork “takes shape from current Tribal needs and research interests” (Cipolla and Quinn 2016, p. 120). For example, one recent field season focused on a study of a 19th-century English farmhouse that once stood next to Cochegan Rock, a large boulder that was a 17th-century Tribal council meeting spot, according to Mohegan oral histories (Fawcett 2000). Training in archaeology for descendant community members is considered to be beneficial to the promotion of Tribal heritage preservation in Connecticut, as well as to understanding and maintaining the Mohegan cultural landscape (Cipolla and Quinn 2016: 120–122). The field school staff also advocate for the preservation of Tribal cultural features “for future generations” (Cipolla and Quinn 2016: 124).

Also in Connecticut, the Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School began in 2003 at the invitation of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation. It is a collaborative effort among Tribal members, professional archaeologists, and University of Massachusetts Boston students (Silliman 2008). Importantly, Silliman’s collaborative research has shown that artifacts on reservation sites, even if European-made, like glass bottles, ceramic vessels, or metal buttons, should be considered Indigenous (rather than Euro-American) artifacts (Silliman 2009). On the Mashantucket (Western) Pequot reservation, former Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center Director Kevin McBride has worked with tribal members on surveys funded by the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program in an effort to interpret and protect the sites of historic battles (see McBride and Naumec 2009; McBride et al. 2016). Building on their research, McBride also worked with the Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office to survey the landscape known as Nipsachuck in northern Rhode Island, where battles unfolded during King Philip’s War in the late 17th century (Harris and Robinson 2015).

Figure 2 – Plymouth Rock is a landmark commemorating the arrival of the Pilgrims to the Americas (Plymouth Rock by Raime is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 1620, when the Mayflower reached the coast of what is today New England (Figure 2), English settlers encountered the Wampanoag people. Several recent seasons of archaeological field schools have excavated in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as part of “Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey,” a research program in advance of the 2020 quadricentennial of New England’s first permanent English settlement (see Beranek et al. 2015). The commemoration of the Plymouth Colony offers us an opportunity to reevaluate the effects of multicultural interactions on the British colonies and ultimately, the founding of the United States. In 1959, Jim Deetz established an archaeology program at Plimouth Patuxet (a living history museum and research center). Plantation archaeologists investigated six 17th-century sites in the mid-late 20th century, including tavern and house sites (Deetz and Deetz 2000: 219), and the artifact assemblages from these excavations have produced most of the museum’s archaeological collection (Bowers 2015). Recent research by a graduate of the UMass Boston Historical Archaeology program has reexamined these assemblages to contextualize artifacts of Indigenous origin in the Plymouth collection, broadening from a focus on Pilgrims to include “Native ways of life throughout colonization and the strategic motivations behind the actions of both Native groups and European settlers as they created and navigated the colonial landscape” (Bowers 2015, p. 11).

On the American West Coast, there are also various projects and archaeologists working with descendant communities. For example, the Pimu Catalina Island Archaeology Project, codirected by Wendy Teeter, Desireé Martinez, and Karimah Kennedy-Richardson, is a collaborative project among the Catalina Island Conservancy, the University of Southern California, and the Gabrielino (Tongva) Nation. The project examines “how the connections between various communities of Tongva…were constructed and maintained” during the historic era (at the time of European contact by Juan Cabrillo in 1542) (Martinez et al. 2014, p. 201). Influenced by “the emotional reactions of Native American community members as they have viewed museum collections,” the codirectors made a commitment to working with community members and to the principles of Indigenous archaeology (Martinez et al. 2014, p. 201-202). Importantly, all field school “students are introduced to the cultural beliefs and deep history of the Tongva” (Martinez et al. 2014, p. 203).

In northern California, the Kashaya Pomo Interpretive Trail Project (KPITP) began in 2004 as a collaboration among the California Department of Parks and Recreation, CALTRANS, University of California Berkeley archaeologists, and the Kashaya Pomo Tribe. On the historic lands of what is today the Fort Ross State Historic Park, the project’s goal was to combine archaeological data and Tribal narratives to tell the history of the Kashaya Pomo people “and their encounters with the Russian mercantile enterprise of Colony Ross” in the early 19th century (Lightfoot et al. 2004, p. 179). Today the trail highlights Kashaya Pomo heritage “from time immemorial to the present. The interpretive program is also designed as a cultural program for tribal members, and especially tribal youth, to reconnect with their homeland” (Gonzales 2016, p. 538). The cultivation of respect “was the primary mechanism for integrating Kashaya values and cultural protocols into both the research design of KPITP and the methods it uses to document and represent tribal heritage within the park” (Gonzales 2016, p. 534). More recently, project member Sara Gonzales has also been a codirector of the Field Methods in Indigenous Archaeology (FMIA) program, a community-based field school, alongside the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office. Projects like these that bring Tribal members on board and that honor Tribal leadership are important examples of Indigenous archaeology in practice.

Residential Institutions

Canada, Mexico, and the United States governments all utilized education to assimilate Indigenous peoples (Dawson 2012), and the investigation of those institutions’ archaeology has only recently been explored (Gonzalez et al. 2018; Lindauer 2009; Surface-Evans 2016). Academic work supports that, of the three nations, the Mexican government system was the least destructive, beginning only in 1926 and assimilating Indigenous students through the application of the same educational curricula as they used for non-Indigenous students (Dawson 2012). This system, because of its shorter duration, being closer in time to the present, and within major metropolitan areas; has received no archaeological investigation at this time. More expansive research of the federal boarding school system of the United States, and the Residential School System, of Canada, demonstrate programs that disempowered Indigenous groups in an attempt to assimilate them into a white, European-descent, national identity (Surface-Evans 2016) at a genocidal level (Milloy 2017). Archaeology at these institutions exposes the ways that assimilation by the governments of Canada and the United States regularly fell short of their own stated goals and illustrates the ways that students rebelled against school norms (Lindauer 2009).

Archaeology allows us to explore the experiences of the people who lived at such institutions through their material culture. While many have legacies stretching back into the 19th century (Lindauer 2009; Przystupa 2018), many of the materials excavated from such schools in the United States date to the 20th century. After Phoenix Indian School closed as a school amid a decline in attendance, it was excavated in the 1990s (Lindauer 2009). Owen Lindauer’s work at the property focused on the ways that students of the past had used objects found in present-day trash mounds to reject the process of assimilation. A similar theme has been found by Sarah Surface-Evans (2016), who excavated the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial School. Their work uses a landscape perspective and applies Spencer-Wood’s (2016) heterarchical models of power to explore gender and rebellion at the school, exploring the spaces girls and boys were allowed to inhabit. These works help us to understand the daily lives of students at these boarding schools as they negotiated retaining their own culture and assimilating or resisting white American culture. More recent collaborative work on Native American boarding schools includes that undertaken at Steward Indian School in Nevada (Cowie et al, 2019). Those excavations worked alongside tribal members to develop a research plan for and recover materials that were part of life at the school.

As part of an ongoing reconciliation process, the archaeology of residential schools in Canada is ongoing with initial excavations in the 2010s guided by those who controlled the former school lands. One of these earlier projects was at the Mohawk Institute, a boarding school that began operating in the 19th century (Milloy 2017). The investigations of the residential school, which was in use until 1970, were under the direction of Paul Racher (Andrew-Gee 2018). They examined the Institute building itself, such as dated graffiti, and some of the materials found during a renovation, hidden behind or inside walls, to examine the feelings of the students who attended school and lived there. It’s part of a professional move to reexamine archaeology in Canada to include the values of First Nations people in their work and as part of a national reconciliation process between the Canadian Government and First Nations people (Andrew-Gee 2018). Other continuing work focuses on using noninvasive archaeological techniques such as ground-penetrating radar to locate the remains and graves of the generation of Indigenous children who the residential schools killed (Wadsworth et al. 2021).

The Descendants of the African Diaspora

Another important community to involve is the descendants of the African Diaspora. While historical archaeology is important for understanding the lives of enslaved peoples (Battle-Baptiste 2011), not all projects began with positive relationships among archaeologists and the descendants of enslaved Africans. One example is the African Burial Ground in New York City, which was on land owned by the federal government (LaRoche and Blakey 1997). Unfortunately, the local African American community became aware of the site only after fieldwork was underway (McGowan and LaRoche 1996). This caused tensions among African Americans, archaeologists, and project proponents, and created a media storm surrounding the site (LaRoche and Blakey 1997; Mack and Blakey 2004; McGowan and LaRoche 1996).

While not necessarily the direct genetic descendants of those buried at the African Burial Ground (see Barrett and Blakey 2011), the African American community members of New York City are the cultural and spiritual descendants of those individuals. Because of the public scrutiny surrounding this project, it has become emblematic of tensions among archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, and descendant communities (LaRoche and Blakey 1997). While the initial excavation and research had been based on the needs of the federal project proponents, there were many unanswered questions posed by descendant groups and other affiliates.

Michael Blakey, an African American bioarchaeologist, took over the direction of the project and asked the descendant community to be involved in shaping the direction of future research at the African Burial Ground. African American community members asked Blakey and his team what historical archaeology could reveal about four topics: the origins of the African population buried in Manhattan, the construction of an African American identity, the quality of life as enslaved individuals, and the instances of resistance (Blakey 2008, p. 21; Barrett and Blakey 2011). These lines of questioning have helped to better color and contextualize the lives of those buried at the African Burial Ground. Since the excavation at this site happened almost 20 years ago, the African American community has become much more involved in the stewardship of the remains, helping to guide the research goals of the project and their ancestors (Blakey 2008). By focusing on the interests and desires of the African American descendant community, this project significantly changed the nature of historical archaeology, scholarly engagement, and the archaeology of the African Diaspora.

Figure 3 – Montpelier was the home of President James Madison as well as numerous enslaved individuals (James Madison’s Montpelier by Wally Gobetz is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

At James Madison’s Montpelier (Figure 3), the Archaeology Department offers a direct way for community members to be involved in the direction of the museum’s research. The African American Descendants’ Project “seeks to identify and create bridges to living descendants of the African American women and men who were enslaved at Montpelier and elsewhere.” Descendant community members may be involved in documentary research or participate in archaeological excavation. Because collaborative research is often reciprocal, Montpelier’s archaeological staff have found that the community members are also a source of valuable advice and information. For example, the Montpelier descendant community members are knowledgeable about the possible spiritual meanings of some artifacts. In 2011, Montpelier archaeologists uncovered a quartz crystal during the excavation of a former slave quarter (Montpelier 2015). Based on input from the descendant community, the staff interpreted the quartz as a marker of spiritual protection for the household against sickness and malevolent spirits (Montpelier 2015). In 2015, a group of descendants who had been involved in the excavation returned to Montpelier to place a representative quartz crystal in the foundation of a reconstruction of one of Montpelier’s slave quarters. As this work continues, we have to investigate parts of the historical record in new and diverse ways to incorporate diverse perspectives, theories, and abilities to better understand the past. This is one of the great things about the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery. It aggregates archaeological data to allow researchers to examine how the enslavement of African people in North America varied over space and time.

Anglo-European Descent Communities

One of the earliest undertakings of historical archaeology of North America has been understanding the Anglo-American communities on the continent, and none have been more important than the discovery of the archaeological remains of Jamestown (Noël Hume 1979). Although now there is archaeological evidence for Vikings at L’Anse aux Meadows (Davis et al. 1988), historical evidence for the Roanoke colony (Straube 2013), and archaeological evidence for a Spanish Fort in the same area (Mallios 2006), Jamestown continues to fascinate American archaeologists in particular because of the importance it holds in the national narrative of the United States and the English colonization of the continent (Horning 2009). Specifically, the preservation of these early settlement sites perpetuates cultural mythologies as a shrine to the United States’ roots (Horning 2006), encouraging patriotic fervor. However, this interest in continued research uncovers evidence of more complex histories that do not always support those same mythologies (Straube 2014, p. 78).

Figure 4 – Archaeological Excavations at Jamestown, Colonial National Historical Park (Archaeological Site, Historic Jamestowne by Ken Lund is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Specifically at Jamestown, archaeology initially helped to bolster ideas of individuality and the Protestant work ethic as the historically documented settlement was uncovered and located. However, as excavation continued, the evidence suggested that the survival of Jamestown was far from secured on the power of Anglo hard work alone. Evidence of starvation (Blanton 2000), cannibalism (Horn et al. 2013), and documents that suggested constant replenishment of supplies from British ships demonstrated that “hard work” in the face of extreme conditions and a powerful Native American population was not enough. Instead, there is evidence that the copper plates obtained from Europe were used as bartering materials with the Algonquian-speaking people of the area, where copper was an important prestige item (Mallios and Emmett 2004). This research suggests that the enduring establishment of the colony rested in the hands of the Native American population rather than being built on the labor of hard working Anglo-Europeans. This interpretation of the colony challenges the Nationalist origins that this site is supposed to uphold and demonstrates how descendant communities can influence the interpretation of a site.

European Immigrant-Descent Communities

In the 19th century, the growth of industrial capitalism in the United States meant new growth in cities, which offers archaeologists the opportunity to investigate technological innovation, profit-making, and the living conditions of workers through material culture (see Beaudry, 1987, p. 14). The development of new industrial technologies and transportation methods, including the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, changed the American market economy.

The construction of the American railroad started around 1830 with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The passage of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862 led to the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, with its famous “Last Spike” in Promontory, Utah (see Baram 2011). The railroad had a lasting effect on the American economy, as well as the displacement of Indigenous people in the American West. Small independent production slowly declined as mass produced goods became more accessible. Consumers were now able to purchase ready-made goods, such as clothing or shoes, that would have once been manufactured locally to meet customers’ needs. Researchers have studied the archaeology of transportation and the changing cultural landscape (see Baram 2011) as well as the archaeology of transient workers (see Paullin 2007; Voss 2018; Walker 2011). Many immigrants, particularly the Irish and the Chinese, worked as laborers on the American railroads or public works projects (see Voss 2018). Aside from demonstrating a better understanding of the daily life and conditions of the workers (e.g., Paullin 2007), the artifacts recovered from railroad work camps also demonstrate workers’ efforts to take care of themselves (see Voss 2018). For example, the material suggests an interest in “respectable masculinity” among skilled railroad workers, including hairbrushes, combs, and dental care items (Walker 2011, p. 5).

The Five Points neighborhood in Manhattan was an area of booming industry and population expansion in the 19th century. African American and Euro-American workers were joined by late 19th-century immigrants from Ireland and Germany (Yamin 2001). Although the neighborhood had a reputation as a slum, it was also a vibrant, multiracial, multiethnic community that contributed to the diversity and vibrancy of New York City. In fact, the archaeology of Five Points tells “a story of New York becoming itself” (Yamin 2001, p. 1). Archaeologists in the late 1990s sought to investigate the relationships among the residents of two city blocks and to learn what life was like among working-class populations (Yamin 2001). Evidence of a Jewish kosher home using edge-decorated dishes for meat and Willow-pattern plates was uncovered in the excavation of the Goldberg family’s privy (Yamin 1998, p. 75), and during excavation at an Irish tenement, archaeologists found tea sets, pig bones, and ale and whiskey bottles (Yamin 1998, p. 80). At a Five Points brothel, archaeologists found that multiple working German families lived alongside sex workers, whose material culture included dishes for entertaining as well as personal effects such as nursing shields and glass female urinals (Yamin 1998, p. 82). This research has helped enhance our understanding of the daily lives of 19th-century immigrants to the United States.

In the 19th century, there were several new waves of European immigrants, including from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe. For example, between 1881 and 1900, 675,000 Jews came to the United States, and between 1901 and 1914, the number increased to 1,346,000 (Dwork 1986, p. 102). New arrivals often planned to reunite with relatives who had arrived earlier and written to their family back home (Sherman, 1998 p. 6). This was the case in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well. For example in the Shapiro family, Shepsel Millhandler emigrated from Ukraine in 1898 and was followed by his four brothers in the next five years (Pinello and McKernan 1999, p. 7). They changed their surname from Millhandler to Shapiro and they became respected leaders in the Jewish community (Pinello and McKernan 1999).

At Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, a 1790s home was opened to the public in 1997 as the Shapiro House, interpreting the daily life in 1919 of a Jewish family from Ukraine. Archaeological excavations carried out at the property in 1995, 1996, and 1997 were intended to investigate the material evidence left behind during the Shapiro occupation of the house, between 1909 and 1928 (Pinello and McKernan 1999). Data were used to select objects for the household furnishing plan and for the placement of certain landscape features, like pathways, gardens, and fences (Pinello and McKernan 1999). Furthermore, the grandchild and other relatives of the Shapiros played a significant role in the interpretive plan of the house, providing oral testimony and material records (e.g., photographs) that informed the role players’ presentation to museum visitors.

Figure 5 – The mikveh discovered at Strawbery Banke (graphic and photo by Alexandra Martin)

In 2014, archaeologists at Strawbery Banke continued to explore the Jewish history of the neighborhood. A community mikveh, a bath used for ritual immersion, was described in some oral histories with descendant community members, collected before the opening of the Shapiro House (Martin 2022). Strawbery Banke staff found that a nearby synagogue, Temple Israel, once owned the mikveh and the house it was built in, which was used as a home for the rabbi. The house was later sold and no longer accessible by the Jewish community. Some scholars have found that changing standards within the Jewish community meant that mikveh use declined after the first generation of immigrants (Lightstone 2011). After the house was torn down during Urban Renewal in the mid-20th century, the mikveh was nearly forgotten. During the museum’s annual field school, students, staff, and volunteers uncovered the mikveh floor (Figure 5) and hundreds of fragments of the white glazed bricks with which it was built (Martin 2022). This excavation provided material evidence of an important historic practice and has proved to be meaningful to the local descendant community, including the current Temple Israel congregation (Martin 2022).

Asian Descent Communities

While often ignored in the history of North America, Asian descent communities have been on the continent since the 16th century (Gomez Borah 1995; Lee 2016). Archaeologists have investigated a broad range of populations and their research greatly benefits from the voices of descendant communities and even firsthand accounts. These voices personalize the history of a group, make archaeology more relevant, informing archaeological analysis, strengthening our understanding of the past, and increasing community support for archaeological projects (Voss 2018).

Japanese Internment

Figure 6 – Map showing exclusion zones and site locations (from Kamp-Whittaker, 2020, p. 57)

The bombing of Pearl Harbor was used as a catalyst for the forced removal of individuals of Japanese descent from areas along the West Coast of the United States (Figure 6) and British Columbia in Canada (Burton et al. 1999; Ng 2002; Thiesmeyer 1995). They were removed to several different sites which ranged from temporary detention centers to work camps which were primarily for males, while whole families were held at internment centers, which are more correctly called concentration camps (Linke 2014; Himel 2015; Japanese American Citizens League 2013). Members of the Japanese American community remained incarcerated from 1942 until 1945 or 1946, while Japanese Canadians were not allowed to return to coastal areas until 1949.

The ongoing Amache Community Archaeology Project serves as an excellent example of incorporating and valuing descendant voices (Fujita 2018). Every two years a group of faculty from several universities works with the National Park Service to hold an archaeological field school at Amache, the site of Colorado’s WWII Japanese incarceration camp. During the field school, volunteers, which include former internees and descendants, work alongside students and provide firsthand accounts, invaluable memories, and unique perspectives that help the archaeologists and students better understand the incarceration experience (Ono 2008; Smith 2018). The field school also includes community open house days that encourage members of the descendant community to tour the site, learn about the archaeology, and share their stories.

In turn, investigating the internment experience through archaeology helps former internees and descendants understand their past from a different perspective, oftentimes revealing new information. For many years after the War, first generation Japanese immigrants did not speak about their time in confinement. Because of this, many details of the experience were lost over the generations. Archaeologists are able to help the Japanese descendant community fill in missing pieces of their past. This symbiotic relationship between archaeologists and a descendant community serves to enrich the project, informing archaeologists of what is important to the community, guiding research, and helping to develop new questions while also continually providing answers (Fujita, 2018).

During the 20th century, World War I and II were drivers of social change that focused on ideas of national identity. In Europe, archaeology has focused on both battlefields and prison camps. The physical impact of these wars is less visible archaeologically in North America and as such more research has been focused on the existence of government-run confinement centers for both foreign nationals and American citizens, especially the incarceration of Japanese Americans. The confinement of individuals of Japanese ancestry was driven not just by fears of wartime espionage but by underlying racism and the concept of American identity (Burton et al. 1999).

Excavations at Japanese Incarceration/Concentration centers in Canada and the U.S. use archaeological data along with oral histories and archival material to focus on three broad research themes; understanding what life was like within these institutions, examining how cultural identities were expressed through the use of material artifacts, and modifications to the landscape. Internee communities responded to their forced incarceration through the development of social organizations and modifications to the landscape (Clark 2017; Garrison 2015; Wegars 2010). Archaeologists working at internment sites have used the concept of landscape, or place, to understand the lived experience of the internees. Excavations at the Amache Internment Center and Manzanar National Historic Site have found extensive gardens and landscape features that use found objects, materials scavenged from construction areas that often blend traditional Japanese with Western styles (Beckworth 2013; Clark 2020). These gardens helped transform barren and often desert landscapes and demonstrate a coping mechanism used to mitigate the effects of incarceration (Chiang 2010). Evidence of cooking and the use of cultural items, like rice bowls, indicate how the incarcerated navigated the institutional setting to demonstrate and maintain their ethnic identities (Camp 2016; Shew 2010; Skiles and Clark 2010; Starke 2015). Conversely, the presence of American cultural icons, like a Mickey Mouse toy, show the American identities of the incarcerated (Kamp-Whittaker 2010) and indicate the complexity of national identity. Combining larger studies of the landscape with artifact analysis helped reconstruct how the incarcerated navigated daily life as their American-ness was contested.

Hispanic Descent Communities

At this point in time, there are few projects that focus on the historical archaeology of Latinx, Chicanx, and Hispanic communities as separate from their Spanish ancestors (Gonzalez 2015). While there has been a lot of work on Spanish Missionization and colonization, archaeologists are only beginning to investigate this heritage alongside descent communities. These draw on the previous decade’s developments in community archaeology to consult and include descendants in the research. Many of these projects, like ongoing research in Hispanic communities in New Mexico, include local community members in excavation and survey as well as respond to requests from the community for aid to investigate particular topics (Jones 2015; Sunseri 2018). Archaeologists working in these communities hold regular town hall meetings or presentations for the community to get feedback about research design and the interpretation of their findings but these outreach events also require input on how to store and curate archaeological data so that the information that archaeologists produce benefits those communities.

There is significant diversity in the history of Hispanic communities in North America as these communities have been divided into populations in Mexico and the United States with each nation-state bringing their own complications. Additionally, the history of Spanish colonization in the continent endured for so long over such long distances that current communities’ relationships to the past and to their heritage are closely tied to specific contexts and may not be similar to each other. Therefore, moving forward it is part of the work of archaeology to understand these regional formations through material evidence, and to compare and contrast the diversity of Spanish colonial heritage in North America.

20th- and 21st-Century Communities

The technical definition of archaeological resources in the United States includes “material remains of human life or activities which are at least 100 years of age” (King 1998, p. 252); however, the entire 20th century was transformative for the people of North America and the archaeological record. War, changing economies, and migrations altered the material and social landscape of the continent. Large-scale transportation networks and the mass production of consumer goods changed the way people understood the landscape and material culture (O’Donovan and Carroll 2011) and conversations about identity at regional and national scales coalesced. These mass movements allow historical archaeology to look at the marginalized groups who tested these ideas of national identity. Specifically, archaeology has allowed us to explore the changing lives of Native American children and Japanese citizens interned during the Second World War through their use of material culture and the archaeology of transportation has allowed us to explore the alteration of our national landscape almost to the present.

Modern Migration

In North America, one of the most important ongoing archaeological projects concerning immigration is the Undocumented Migration Project. Project director Jason De León and his collaborators are examining the material culture of undocumented migrants from Northern Mexico into Southern Arizona (De León 2012; De León 2013; De León and Wells 2015). While some may dismiss such studies as “garbology” rather than “archaeology,” studies of undocumented migration, and particularly their material culture, allows archaeological methods to remain relevant and tied to current issues regarding economics and migration. Archaeology has allowed us to explore not only the pathways that illegal immigrants take, but also the folk beliefs that rise out of the process of crossing the desert and the community economies that are built upon this industry (De León 2012).

With the creation of strict border controls, the United States has prioritized removing undocumented migrants from the country and using the desert as a deterrent to migration as a terrestrial route (De León 2012). Unfortunately, this method has not done much to stop the movement of migrant peoples. A unique disposable material culture has evolved in Mexico specifically to serve those trying to cross the desert. This industry has standardized the materials migrants carry with them across the desert, which embody the various folk beliefs that have sprung up regarding successfully traversing the desert (De León 2012). Beyond allowing us to specifically identify migrants from their material culture, De León’s work is an excellent case study of how folk beliefs influence the form of material culture. Many of the items associated with the uniform or standard tool kit of the migrant objectively make them easier to spot in the desert or negatively impact their ability to complete the journey, demonstrating how form and function are not always executed to be most efficient for the task at hand (De León 2013). This project effectively demonstrates that the principles of historical archaeology may be useful even in examining contemporaneous material culture, and contributes significantly to broader political and national conversations concerning migration.

Archaeology of Transience

Figure 7 – Burning Man from the air (Burning Man 2012 by Steve Jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

While archaeology of the 21st century does not fall within the legal definition of archaeology in most countries (see King 1998, p. 252), this has not prevented archaeologists from exploring the material culture left behind during this century using anthropological theory. It is also sometimes referred to as contemporary archaeology because of legal definitions that specify what is historical and archaeological for preservation purposes (Chenowith 2017). Some of these projects include the “man camps” of North Dakota that sprang up in relation to the oil boom and bust (Caraher et al. 2017; Gannon 2016). These looked at the social networks and modifications made to temporary dwellings such as RVs to make them feel more like homes established in permanent dwellings (Caraher et al. 2017). Another project investigates Burning Man, a temporary but annually constructed city about 100 miles outside of Reno, Nevada (Figure 7). There, temporary venues including small homes and stages are built and are best studied during the event and may provide insights into similarly used ancient sites (White 2013; 2022). Another is the archaeology of homelessness, which examines the material culture of current populations who are without housing. As homelessness is increasingly a problem in urban areas, understanding these populations through archaeology may help to find unique solutions to the problem (Zimmerman et al. 2010; Zimmerman 2016). Of these recent projects, one of the largest and most well-known archaeological endeavors is the examination of undocumented migration, as introduced in the section on modern migration. This system affects Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and archaeology has helped us understand the cultures surrounding the industry, evaluate particular deterrents, as well as explore the routes that migrants take to enter their chosen nation, particularly between the United States and Mexico.

Intersectional Theory and the Future of Engaged Archaeology

These projects created more theoretically robust frameworks for archaeology and allowed the field to explore the everyday lives of a variety of people. However, while these works investigated diverse peoples, serious collaboration with descendant communities have only recently become integral to our study, and the field remains largely dominated by white voices in North America.

While archaeology has always been interested in understanding all people in the past, a greater focus on the lives of queer folx and other marginalized people in the past is ascendant. As archaeology becomes more open and diverse through the inclusion of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in the discipline, as well as other minority groups such as disabled people and members of the LGBTQIA2S community, a history of North America that is told with the diversity that has always been present on the continent will come to be the known narrative.

Race and ethnicity have also become major research areas for archaeologists. Specifically, historical archaeologists have developed theories and models for understanding what happens when multiple cultural groups come into contact with one another in colonial situations. How did European arrivals in the Americas influence the material culture of Indigenous peoples? How were isolated European populations affected by the culture and practices of surrounding Native groups?

Archaeologists also turned these questions toward African American populations, asking how diverse enslaved African peoples brought to the Americas adapted their customs, beliefs, and practices in polyethnic plantation and domestic settings (Ferguson 1992). Intersectional frameworks that account for a variety of types of theory involving cultural contact have developed in recent years. These include creolization (Dawdy 2000), hybridity (Liebmann 2008; Silliman 2013), metissage (Nassaney 2008), and ethnogenesis (Voss 2008). These frameworks are meant to explicitly deal with the North American historical context and the plethora of cultures that influenced the material culture record in a variety of places across the continent.

Additionally, Indigenous archaeology as a topic of study and as a theoretical framework expanded its use in archaeology in the 21^st century. As people Indigenous to North America do not recognize the divide between historic and prehistoric, using the framework of Indigenous archaeology means applying similar explanatory methods to historic and nonhistorical sites and interrogating why we think of history and prehistory as separate (Lightfoot 1995). This is part of an ongoing effort to decolonize the practice of archaeology in general, which involves acknowledging the power that archaeologists have over Indigenous groups because of colonialism and the ways that the discipline prioritized Western ways of knowing over Indigenous ways (Atalay 2006). To do this requires non-Indigenous archaeologists to think about the role of archaeology in maintaining existing power structures and to actively collaborate with Indigenous groups on archaeological projects to dismantle oppression.

Finally, Whitney Battle-Baptiste’s (2011) book, Black Feminist Archaeology, represents a theoretical perspective built on previous eras, namely the feminist framework, and acknowledges how archaeologists themselves are part of the construction of archaeological narratives. Her work is explicitly intersectional, laying out the theoretical framework she intends to create and then applies. She also explores how the background of the archaeologist impacts the research. This self-reflection, to include the archaeologist as a maker and creator of interpretation, is a vital new aspect of intersectional perspectives in archaeology that seek to acknowledge how who we are as archaeologists influences the questions we ask, how we understand the world, and what we know.

Case Study: The Chickasaw Explorers and Charity Hall

Riley Freeman, M.A., R.P.A., Terracon Consultants, Inc.

Matthew P. Rooney, Ph.D., Arkansas Archeological Survey

Charity Hall was an Indigenous boarding school run by Presbyterian missionaries within the Chickasaw Nation between 1820 and 1830 (Rooney et al. 2022). This was one of many schools established by missionaries during the 1820s using funding from the Civilization Fund Act of 1819, which made a provision for the annual distribution of $10,000 to Christian denominations, to be supervised by the Indian Office of the War Department of the United States, to “educational” missions. Chickasaw Nation, between 1818 and 1832, controlled much of what is today north Mississippi and northwest Alabama, and Chickasaw leaders allowed six schools, including Charity Hall, to be established in their sovereign territory during this time. The Chickasaws also supplemented federal funding by providing thousands of dollars annually to construct the schools and pay for operating expenses. Over a period of 10 years, Charity Hall served a total of 61 Indigenous students, many of whom became prominent leaders as adults in Oklahoma following Indian Removal.

The Charity Hall research project consisted of three seasons of fieldwork (2018–2020) at the site in collaboration between professional archaeologists at the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Chickasaw Nation itself. The Chickasaw Nation funded excavations in 2018 and 2019 and sent Chickasaw Explorers to the site to assist with excavations in 2019. The Chickasaw Explorers program arranges for groups of college students who are members of Chickasaw Nation to visit the ancestral homelands from which their people were forcibly removed and develop a direct relationship with the important places in the lives of their ancestors. Here follow two accounts written by individuals involved with the project. The first is written by Riley Freeman, a member of Chickasaw Nation who participated in the Charity Hall excavations in 2019 and who is now pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology. The second is written by Matthew Rooney, the professional archaeologist and primary investigator who initiated the research project during his time at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Riley Freeman

Unifying Chickasaw students with their ancestral homelands and heritage is the main purpose for the Chickasaw Explorers archaeological training program. For two weeks, these students cultivate their Chickasaw identities; bond with fellow Chickasaws; immerse themselves into history, language, and culture; and, lastly, learn about archaeology along the way. Many of these students, including myself, did not grow up within Chickasaw Nation boundaries. We missed out on the cultural and communal events like the Annual Meeting and Festival, the art exhibits, and stickball games that foster a sense of belonging. Even though Chickasaw Nation provides numerous services for citizens outside of the boundaries, we still never felt like we were a part of a community and identity larger than our own immediate families.

The Chickasaw Explorers program was a transformative experience for me. Unsure of what to do with my B.A. in anthropology, and unable to afford any archaeological field schools, I decided to apply for Explorers after stumbling across an ad for it in the Chickasaw newspaper. To say the least, I quickly fell in love with archaeology and the homelands. We visited historical sites, heard centuries-old stories about the land, acquired several new Chickasaw words, and helped excavate an ancestral site. I will never forget the first time I held a shard of Chickasaw pottery. I met colleagues, made friends, connected to my identity as a Chickasaw woman, and for the first time in my life, knew exactly what I wanted to do with it—become an Indigenous anthropologist and archaeologist.

I returned to the program the next summer and assisted in the Charity Hall excavations. While none of my ancestors attended Charity Hall, they were sent to similar schools and faced the same task: to fit into a world that was foreign, dangerous, and built to erase their Chickasaw identity. Among the Explorers were a few Charity Hall descendants, and they felt such joy when they got to hold artifacts from a school that their family member attended. Ultimately, we all encountered the remnants of a place where our families struggled and fought for a better life, a better future for us.

For most of us Explorers, interacting with our ancestral homelands is an experience unlike any other. The winding creeks, lush prairies, and rushing rivers are the backdrop to our sacred stories. All characteristics that define the Chickasaw—foodways, celebrations, dances, and handicrafts—are entangled with the homelands. Since the beginning of our history, the homelands transformed us just as much as we transformed them. Even after going through colonization, assimilation, and forced removal, the Chickasaw’s connection to the homelands remains unconquerable. Indigenous archaeology and Indigenous peoples contributing to archaeology promotes mutual respect and trust between tribes and researchers, encourages inclusive and decolonized archaeology, and promotes the prosperity of Indigenous peoples. Places like Charity Hall focused on “civilizing” and erasing Chickasaw identity, but programs like Chickasaw Explorers create hope for the reclamation of these stories and the connections to the homelands.

Matthew P. Rooney

I had the pleasure and fortune of being able to participate in the Chickasaw Explorer program as a professional archaeologist throughout my time as a doctoral student. During the summer of 2017 we performed excavations around a Mississippian mound site in eastern Mississippi, where I got to work with a rotating crew of young Chickasaws excavating test units and finding features associated with what was probably one of their ancestral houses. I literally got in the trenches with the Chickasaws and listened to their thoughts about what we were doing—what was important to them and what kind of questions they had about their past. The experience was so formative for me that I decided to develop my own project in the area with the Chickasaws in mind as collaborators from the beginning.

Director of Chickasaw Archaeology Brad Lieb had already been eyeing Charity Hall as a potential site for research and came out with me to the site during the following summer to perform some initial reconnaissance survey. During that summer of 2018 the Chickasaw Explorers were excavating another Mississippian site in their homelands, so I got to work alongside another group of Chickasaw participants, including Riley Freeman, as they handled the objects of their ancestors. Every summer they invited us to their dormitory to prepare for us some of their traditional foods to be enjoyed along with prayers and discussion of the work. In a small way, all of us archaeologists were putting cultural anthropologist hats on while being among the Chickasaws.

After my initial reconnaissance of Charity Hall, I put together my research design and submitted it to Chickasaw Nation to get feedback and approval to do more concentrated fieldwork with the Chickasaw Explorers at the site in 2019. I have since learned that it is uncommon for Indigenous peoples to have a say in research-based archaeology before it is actually performed. One particular tribal member with whom I collaborate told me that he had never before been approached to collaborate on a research-based project that addressed that member’s own questions and interests. During my archival research phase, I found a list of the students who had attended Charity Hall, and I was able to provide this list to the new crop of Chickasaw Explorers who took part in the excavations in 2019. As Riley writes above, some of the participants found that they were direct descendants of children who attended the school two centuries earlier, which made for a very spiritual experience for us all.

Due to my participation in the Chickasaw Explorer program as a professional archaeologist, I had all of those participants in my mind through every step of the research process—writing research design, excavating material culture, performing artifact analysis, presenting at conferences, and publishing my results. I organized a symposium at the 2019 Southeastern Archaeological Conference on Chickasaw archaeology, and I was able to invite Chickasaw Nation Executive Historic Preservation Officer Kirk Perry to be a discussant. He spoke about how special it was for them to be connected to their homelands through the material culture we were handling, and he also gave me some polite criticism about one of my conceptions that I was able to apply to my later writings on Charity Hall.

When it came time to publish my scholarship, I did so in collaboration with Dr. Brad Lieb (Rooney et al. 2022), and we decided to add another layer of review to the normal review process by submitting our manuscript to Chickasaw Nation for commentary and feedback. We decided to adopt Chickasaw Nation’s preferred pronouns throughout our article—terms such as First American and Southeastern Indian—with an author’s note explaining why.

My feeling coming out of the Chickasaw Explorer collaborative experience is that all archaeologists should do their best to be good cultural anthropologists who also work in the present. I think we all understand that the past has a tremendous impact on the present and is never dead and gone. The same goes for Indigenous ancestors. I believe it is vital that researchers collaborate and communicate with Indigenous peoples at every step of their research process, and consider from the beginning whether their project is even worthy of being performed. Before I even start a project now, I ask myself: Would the descendants even want this done? If so, how can we do it together?

Tribal Archaeologies: A Personal Reflection

James Harrison Macrae, M.A., Assistant State Archaeologist; Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation

My journey in tribal archaeologies began 12 years ago when I was working with Craig Eagleshield and Larkin Chandler from the Standing Rock Sioux and Crow tribes, as archaeological and cultural monitors on a gas pipeline project in eastern Montana during the fall and winter of 2010. I was, to be honest, feeling burned-out with corporate CRM, but I greatly enjoyed working with and learning from Craig and Larkin during that project. Now, over a decade later, I can attest that working with living Indigenous communities offers an alternatively rich experience in professional archaeology, making friends that can last a lifetime.

At some point, I had the fundamental realization that all the amazing precontact artifacts and sites, which I had had the opportunity to work with during fieldwork in Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Washington, were not simply archaeological and scientific resources; but instead, the cultural patrimony and heritage of living tribal communities and people. I also realized that it is our duty as archaeologists to reconnect those communities with the archeological heritage that is theirs fundamentally. I have learned that living tribal families and communities are directly and indirectly affected by damages to sites, archaeological landscapes, hunting, gathering, and ceremonial places. The destruction of archaeological resources and related tribal heritage is just one of several postcolonial challenges that are affecting tribal communities today. Working as a tribal archaeologist gives one the wonderful chance to serve a traditionally underserved community directly and in a hands-on way.

My career has involved developing Indigenous-led and -staffed archaeological programs at the Spokane and Swinomish Tribes. If you are approaching Indigenous Archaeology from a non-Indigenous background, you have to be prepared to examine your own bias and get “woke” to some of the colonial, paternalistic, racist, and genocidal facts of American history that have affected your host community and that you have likely never heard of. This must be approached in a kind, open, honest, healing and restorative process, and it is not easy. One of my first teachings, by Bill Matt, was to understand Indian Humor and how it is a subtle way of coping with terrible events.

It is much more important to listen and learn than it is to instruct. It is essential to follow and incorporate the teachings you receive directly into your archaeological practice. Oftentimes serendipity and the spiritual must be incorporated into the scientific method. Every tribe is different. This is not for everyone, but for those with the right spirit, with an open mind and a calling for this role, it can lead to a rich, and rewarding career as a professional tribal archaeologist. Indigenous archaeology means employing the four-field approach (archaeology, cultural anthropology, osteology, and linguistics) as tools to rigorously protect and document Indigenous history and landscapes. The goal is to decolonize archaeology and to serve tribal communities using an Indigenous point of view and ethical framework, as directed by cultural elders in your host community.

It is unfortunate that much interpretation and discourse in anthropology, history, and the CRM gray literature is based in racial bias, directly targeting Indigenous communities. Indigenous Archaeology involves critically analyzing these narratives and rewriting them to better reflect Indigenous perspectives, worldview, and values, while giving voice and serving the indigenous community you may be working with. This involves (to borrow a metaphor) going “across the creek,” to a new country, going to learn and embrace Indigenous ways, to find a rich culture and power that is still thriving there, on reservations and tribal communities across the United States, that are unseen, unknown, and unknowable to much of the larger modern American culture.

Today, many Indian Nations have Tribal Historic Preservation Offices and cultural heritage programs, employing thousands of people across the U.S. For the tribal members reading this, thank you for studying anthropology and archaeology. This is a wonderful way to earn a degree and to serve your home community (or another tribe) as a THPO or other related staff earning a good salary. For the non-Indigenous people reading this, Indian communities need professional staff like you, and the work typically comes with good pay and good benefits. If you have the intrepid spirit of an anthropologist and a strong heart and mind, I would recommend considering a career working for an Indian Tribe or Nation. If not, wherever you find yourself employed, fully embrace the spirit of tribal consultation, community involvement, and other ethical and Indigenous best practices throughout your precontact archaeological work. This is good work that feels good to do. Take it upon yourself to learn the tribal land acknowledgement where you live, work, or are conducting field studies. Visit the tribes as appropriate, attend publicly open tribal events, and support tribal enterprises.

Sincerely,

James Harrison Macrae, M.A.

Owner: Falcon Cultural Resources Institute

Bow, Washington

Discussion Questions

1. What are some of the benefits of working with descendant communities for archaeologists? What are some of the benefits of working with archaeologists for members of descendant communities? Can you think of any drawbacks?
2. This chapter describes a number of examples of archaeological research in different communities. Compare and contrast the goals of two different projects.
3. This chapter describes some examples of contemporary archaeology. What role can archaeology play in these projects that may not be addressed through other research methods? Can you think of some other examples?
4. What do you think is the future of engaged archaeology? Where would you like to see the discipline go?

About the Authors

Alexandra Martin is the archaeologist at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH. She conducts research at the museum’s archaeological sites and is responsible for maintaining the museum’s collection of over one million archaeological artifacts. Alix is also a faculty fellow in the Anthropology department and coordinator of the Native American and Indigenous Studies minor program at the University of New Hampshire. As a board member of the New Hampshire Archeological Society, she serves as the editor of the society’s publication, The New Hampshire Archeologist. Alix holds degrees in Anthropology from Mount Holyoke College and The College of William & Mary.

Paulina F. Przystupa, PhD is a Filipine-Polish-Canadian-American Postdoctoral Researcher in Archaeological Data Literacy at the Alexandria Archive Institute / Open Context. Trained as a historical landscape archaeologist exploring socialization and assimilation at children’s institutions, Paulina works in pedagogy-focused digital archaeology contexts to understand the dynamic ways people learn and teach archaeology and the ways that education shapes national and community identities.

April Kamp-Whittaker is a Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Chico and Co-Director of the Amache Community Archaeology Project. Her research has focused on the archaeology of community, community engagement in museums and interpretation, and the archaeology of childhood. She has worked on historical and prehistoric projects across the U.S. and tries to find new ways to connect audiences to archaeology through public presentations, exhibits, and curriculum.

Dana Ogo Shew is an archaeologist, oral historian, and interpretive specialist at the Anthropological Studies Center at Sonoma State University. Ms. Shew has 15 years of experience in cultural resource management, specializing in WWII Japanese American incarceration research, oral history collection, and public interpretation, particularly in collaboration with descendant and Tribal communities. She holds an M.A. in Archaeology and is a Certified Interpretive Planner.

(with case studies by Riley Freeman, M.A., Matthew P. Rooney, Ph.D., and James Macrae, M.A.)

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Further Exploration

This list includes publicly available resources referenced in or relevant to this chapter, which may be of interest to readers who want to learn more. The URLs are typed out below as a courtesy for those who are reading a print version of the text. Please keep in mind that links may break over time and may not be immediately updated. Instructors should use discretion when assigning materials from this list. While the chapter itself has been checked for web accessibility, the editors do not vouch for the accessibility of all supplementary linked resources.

20th Century – Celena McPeak “Our Children Are Our Future: An Archaeology of Childhood on the Grand Ronde Reservation” – https://x.com/potatokitty/status/997588262578405376/photo/1

African American Descendants’ Project – https://www.montpelier.org/descendants-project/

Amache Community Archaeology Project – https://www.amachearchaeology.com/

Amache Internment Center – https://amache.org/

American Battlefield Protection Program – https://www.nps.gov/orgs/2287/index.htm

Black Feminist Archaeology – https://www.routledge.com/Black-Feminist-Archaeology/Battle-Baptiste/p/book/9781598743791

Burning Man – https://burningman.org/

Chickasaw Explorers – Chickasaw Explorers Program – https://www.chickasaw.net/Services/Culture/Chickasaw-Explorers-Program.aspx

Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery – https://www.daacs.org/

Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School – Stephen W. Silliman, Ph.D. Research – https://www.faculty.umb.edu/stephen_silliman/html/northeast.html

Field Methods in Indigenous Archaeology – Gonzalsa Blog – https://sites.uw.edu/gonzalsa/fmia/

Fort Ross State Historic Park – Fort Ross – https://www.fortross.org/

James Madison’s Montpelier – https://www.montpelier.org/

Manzanar National Historic Site – https://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm

Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center – https://www.pequotmuseum.org/

Paul Racher – Eric Andrew-Gee “Excavating Canada’s Past with a Newly Critical Eye” – https://web.archive.org/web/20180123211809/https:/www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/excavating-canadas-past-with-a-newly-critical-eye/article37682921/

Pimu Catalina Island Archaeology Project – Pimu Catalina Island Archaeological Field School – https://pimu.weebly.com/

Place a representative quartz crystal – “Quartz Crystal Placement” video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWq29gyJ7Zs

Plimouth Patuxet – https://plimoth.org/

Quartz Crystal – https://bronzevillearchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/montpelier-crystal-from-slave-dwelling-excavation.jpg?w=816

Strawbery Banke Museum – https://www.strawberybanke.org/

Undocumented Migration Project – https://www.undocumentedmigrationproject.org/