Craig Cipolla

Assistant Professor, Anthropology

Academic Leave

craig.cipolla@tufts.edu

Braker Hall

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Research/Areas of Interest

North American archaeology; historical archaeology; collaborative Indigenous archaeology; Indigenous-colonial history; archaeological method & theory; colonialism; museums; material culture; archaeological theory; the history of archaeology; New England; Great Lakes

My research focuses on the archaeology of Indigenous-colonial interactions in North America, particularly in New England and the Great Lakes. I combine archaeological patterns with written and oral records to learn about colonial-indigenous histories, placing them into critical dialogue with the long term Indigenous and European histories that shaped them. My research on colonialism addresses issues of ecology, identity, resistance, cultural continuity and change, and more. Much of my research is designed and carried out in collaboration with Indigenous nations. My current collaboration is with the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut; we design and run an archaeological field school each summer on the Mohegan Reservation. There, we identify and study archaeological sites from a range of time periods, with special emphasis on Mohegan-colonial interactions in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and we train the next generations of archaeology students in collaborative archaeological method and theory.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, USA, 2010
Master of Arts, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, United States, 2005

Biography

I am an anthropologically-trained archaeologist interested in historical archaeology, the archaeology of colonialism, collaborative Indigenous archaeology, and archaeological theory. My research focuses on Indigenous-colonial histories of New England and the Great Lakes. Since 2010, I have directed the Mohegan Archaeological Field School in collaboration with the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut. The field school studies eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archaeological sites on the Mohegan Reservation in Uncasville, Connecticut, while training new generations of archaeology students in collaborative Indigenous archaeology and archaeological method and theory.

Before joining Tufts Anthropology, I held academic positions in the US, UK, and Canada. Most recently, I was Curator and Vettoretto Chair of North American Archaeology at the Royal Ontario Museum and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.