Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration

Society for American Archaeology Scholarly Book Award

Collaborative archaeological projects focused on the Nipmuc people of New England that offer a model for research incorporating Indigenous knowledge and scholarship

Highlighting the strong relationship between New England’s Nipmuc people and their land from the pre-contact period to the present day, this book helps demonstrate that the history of Native Americans did not end with the arrival of Europeans. This is the rich result of a twenty-year collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous authors, who use their own example to argue that Native peoples need to be integral to any research project focused on indigenous history and culture.

The stories traced in this book center around three Nipmuc archaeological sites in Massachusetts—the seventeenth century town of Magunkaquog, the Sarah Boston Farmstead in Hassanamesit Woods, and the Cisco Homestead on the Hassanamisco Reservation. The authors bring together indigenous oral histories, historical documents, and archaeological evidence to show how the Nipmuc people outlasted armed conflict and Christianization efforts instigated by European colonists. Exploring key issues of continuity, authenticity, and identity, Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration provides a model for research projects that seek to incorporate indigenous knowledge and scholarship.

D. Rae Gould, a member of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band, Massachusetts, is executive director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Brown University.

Holly Herbster is principal investigator and senior archaeologist at the Public Archaeology Laboratory.

Heather Law Pezzarossi is assistant professor of anthropology at Syracuse University.

Stephen A. Mrozowski, professor of anthropology and director of the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is the author of The Archaeology of Class in Urban America.