Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration: Discovering Histories That Have Futures

“Deftly weaves historic records and archaeological research through an Indigenous lens to create a well-crafted story of the Nipmuc of New England. Through this lens, the reader will better recognize the struggles Indigenous people faced in colonial America as well as the struggles they continue to face as they try to reestablish their sovereign relationships with the United States.”—Joe Watkins, coeditor of Challenging the Dichotomy: The Licit and the Illicit in Archaeological and Heritage Discourses “Demonstrates how genuinely inclusive archaeology can and should be. The complicated and long underappreciated histories of New England’s Native Nipmuc people are brought to life through the wholly compelling narratives of Nipmuc individuals from the seventeenth century to the present carefully pieced together from traditional knowledge, fragments of pottery and stone, snippets of documents, and the physical traces of meaningful spaces and places.”—Audrey Horning, coeditor of Becoming and Belonging in Ireland AD c. 1200–1600: Essays in Identity and Cultural Practice 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 The authors bring together indigenous oral histories, historical documents, and archaeological evidence to show how the Nipmuc people outlasted armed conflict and Christianization efforts instigated by European colonists.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 Nipmuc Nation of Massachusetts, is associate 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 a visiting scholar in the Department 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.