Andrew Agha

I received my PhD in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina-Columbia in 2020 and my MA in Anthropology also from UofSC in 2004; my dissertation chair was Dr. Ken Kelly and my thesis chair was Dr. Leland Ferguson, emiritus. I received my BS in Anthropology from the College of Charleston in 1998. I engage Historical Political Ecology when I study the creation of past landscapes, particularly how Africans played a role in the 1670s creation and origination of Carolina's agriculture. I invented a new "Materiality of Improvement" in my dissertation that identifies markers of 17th century Improvement to understand how English elites, both those orchestrating colonial activity and events from England and those on the ground in Carolina, harnessed the early sciences of the Royal Society of London as they developed the first private property ever created in Carolina. Seventeenth-century Improvement evolved into early English science by the 1660s. On 1670s-era sites in Carolina, I found artifact patterns that sort out the use of space on private properties and the commons outside and apart from property. I identify the utilization of early English science between these two distinct social and material spaces through the plants that were grown on both private properties and the commons. The goal of my project was to learn how enslaved Africans were worked into the property-science combination and how they became unwilling "scientific laborers" for their masters and owners. Historical Political Ecology is the overarching theoretical perspective that allowed me to find such unique and never-before identified connections in the Carolina colony.

I have been a professional archaeologist for 25 years. I am owner of Aghatech Industries LLC. I also currently serve as a Principal Investigator for the Archaeological Institute of the Pee Dee, based in Florence, SC. I worked in the private sector for roughly 8 years as a Senior Archaeologist and Program Manager in a major Southeastern CRM firm. I worked for the public with South Carolina State Parks by serving as an archaeologist at Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site (2000-2001, 2012-2015). I served as the President of the Archaeological Research Collective, Inc. (ARC), a 501(c)(3) that was in operation from 2012 to 2017. In the past I have worked for the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology (SCIAA), private land owners, The Charleston Museum, and private firm New South and Associates. I have taught over 10 field schools for the College of Charleston, The Charleston Museum, and Salve Regina University from 1999 to 2015. In 1998 I was made Assistant Supervisor of a 6-week field school on the island of Cyprus at the site Idalion, a 6th-7th century Roman copper production settlement below an acropolis that housed a temple to Venus; the field school was through the University of Arizona.