Rooting in New England: Archaeologies of colonialism, community, and collaboration

The Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School is a collaborative project between the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and the University of Massachusetts Boston that I have directed since its inception in 2003. It centers on conducting community-engaged archaeological research on the Eastern Pequot reservation, established in AD1683 in the northeastern United States and still occupied today as one of the oldest reservations in the country. To date, the project has received external funding from the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. The objectives are to study the persistence of this Native American community through centuries of colonialism; to interrogate the ways that culture, community, and identity are lived in the past and represented in the present; and to explore community-driven and participatory archaeology.