Books by Christopher Matthews
Archaeologies of Violence and Privilege, 2020
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Ethnographic archaeology has emerged as a form of inquiry into archaeological dilemmas that arise... more Ethnographic archaeology has emerged as a form of inquiry into archaeological dilemmas that arise as scholars question older, more positivistic paradigms. In Ethnographic Archaeologies, the term refers to diverse methods, objectives, and rationalities. The contributors to this volume, for example, understand ethnographic archaeology variously as a means of critical engagement with heritage stakeholders, as the basis of public policy debates, as a critical archaeological study of ethnic groups, as the study of what archaeology actually does (as opposed to what researchers often think it is doing) in excavations and surveys, and as a foundation for transnational collaborations among archaeologists. What keeps the term “ethnographic archaeology” coherent and relevant is the consensus among practitioners that they are embarking on a new archaeological path by attempting to engage the present directly and fundamentally.
On the significance of this book
“This important collection expands the boundaries of archaeology and charts out an emerging and dynamic field. The eminent contributors, in their consistently powerful and thought-provoking chapters, situate archaeological practice in the ethnographic present, forcing us to reflect on our responsibilities toward the various communities associated with the archaeological past and with archaeology as a discipline. In these pages, archaeology is reconnected with ethnography in a critical, reflexive, and ethically sensitive manner.”
—Yannis Hamilakis, University of Southampton, UK; author of The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece (2007).
Papers by Christopher Matthews
Grappling withe Monuments of Oppression: Moving from Analysis to Activism, Christopher Fennel, ed, 2025
In 2023, the city of Newark, NJ unveiled, Shadow of a Face, a new monument dedicated to Harriet T... more In 2023, the city of Newark, NJ unveiled, Shadow of a Face, a new monument dedicated to Harriet Tubman and the activists of the underground railroad. The monument is located in a space set aside by city founders in the 17th century as a commons known as the Upper Green. The Tubman memorial represents the life-risking fight for freedom, decolonization, and equality, that she and her network of supporters and allies developed to free Black populations across the nation from enslavement through the Underground Railroad. The Tubman memorial contributes to the history of memorialization in the commons but has done so in ways that are instructive for understanding how to establish a future for public monuments that is both critical of our inherited narratives and inclusive of communities marginalized by popularized white-washed history and racism.
Advocacy and Archaeology: Urban Intersections, 2023
Advocacy in archaeology requires paying close attention to what archaeology is, what it does, and... more Advocacy in archaeology requires paying close attention to what archaeology is, what it does, and what it can do. As archaeologists, we all want our work to reflect the capacity of archaeology to document, inform, educate, preserve, engage, and challenge the social and material worlds we encounter. Archaeology is primed for these tasks because its focus is unearthing and exposing what was demolished, replaced, and buried in the process of creating our world. Like other social research fields, archaeology expands what we know about ourselves but it also highlights that knowing who we are is always based on partial knowledge that is itself constantly subject to change. For one, archaeology reminds us that we stand on foundations that many have helped to build. But also, metaphorically, archaeology exposes the hidden places in our world so that we may be er understand the fabrications that give it structure. Archaeology can be a platform for advocacy where these exposures challenge the legitimacy of the present, which is not o en the sort of news people want to hear. This collection of papers brings this understanding of archaeology to a wide range of advocacy and issues. To explore and comment on these chapters, I want first to discuss what advocacy is and why archaeologists become advocates. This involves exploring who advocates for what and what it takes to be an advocate. These are vital questions that we need to answer so that we may feel confident that the advocacy we pursue is productive and effective. I then turn to discuss the chapters in more detail to show how they realize the potential for an archaeological advocacy useful in modern urban societies.
Archaeologies of Violence and Privilege , 2020
Archaeologes of Vioelence and Privilege, 2020
In an op-ed for the New York Times titled "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson (2016), ... more In an op-ed for the New York Times titled "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson (2016), a prominent scholar and critic of race in America, expressed and contextualized the rage of the black community that came in response to recent police violence. The violent acts he spoke of included police shootings of unarmed African American men and the retaliation by black shooters in both Dallas and Baton Rouge.
Journal for the Anthropology of North America, 2020
The value of historic preservation is defined by an appreciation for old buildings as contributin... more The value of historic preservation is defined by an appreciation for old buildings as contributing to the sense of place of communities, both large and small. A recent national effort to develop a "preservation for people," however, suggests that the inherent good of preservation is being challenged and rethought. This article considers this self-assessment a retrenchment aimed at ensuring the preservation of the preservation field. Looking specifically at the urban and suburban landscape of Essex County, New Jersey, since the passing of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1965, I examine how preservation has developed a tradition of serving only those that can support its agenda. I then turn to show how those neglected by the preservation field in the county nevertheless practice preservation on their own terms, developing the foundations of what I call "a people's preservation." This counternarrative produces a different frame for preservation, showing how it can serve not a generic people but specific communities whose self-determination can be the real focus of preservation practice.
Journal for the Anthropology of North America, 2020
This short essay is an introduction to a thematic collection of three articles on urban erasures.... more This short essay is an introduction to a thematic collection of three articles on urban erasures. This essay provides an overview of the articles and situates the collection at the intersection of critical heritage studies, contemporary archaeology, and collaborative community-based research.
Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage , 2019
This thematic collection of articles broadens archaeological understandings of race by moving bey... more This thematic collection of articles broadens archaeological understandings of race by moving beyond the identification of evidence of a Black, Native, or hybrid, multiracial identities. Through explorations of the nature of archaeological sites and material culture associated with multiracial spaces, articles in this collection describe the ways material culture was used to express multiple identities. These studies also seek to document the diverse spatial and material practices that helped Black, Native, and multiracial persons negotiate the often conflicting social, political, and economic aspirations. This introduction article provides an overview of these theoretical and methodological challenges, and introduces the articles in this collection.
Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 2019
Research on the Silas Tobias site in Setauket, New York has identified a small nineteenth-century... more Research on the Silas Tobias site in Setauket, New York has identified a small nineteenth-century homestead with a well-preserved and stratified archaeological context. Documentation of the site establishes that the site was occupied from at least 1823 until about 1900. Based on documentary evidence, the Tobias family is considered African American, though the mixed Native American and African American heritage of the descendant community is also well-known. Excavations in 2015 exposed both architecturaland midden-associated deposits that shed light on daily life of the Tobias household, which suggests the preservation of Native American cultural practices both in technology and foodways. In essence, the site presents excellent evidence of the mixing of cultural traditions, a process interpreted in this paper as a sign of both political agency of the Tobias family as well as a period of greater tolerance for racial difference associated with the end of slavery in New York.
Journal of Community Archaoelogy and Heritage, 2019
Archaeologists often perceive community archaeology as an inclusive space where the presence of m... more Archaeologists often perceive community archaeology as an inclusive space where the presence of multiple voices drawn into this space through a shared interest in recovering and understanding the past broadens the discourse of archaeology and related heritage. While this work provides access for diverse stakeholders, certain routines seem embedded that limit the potential for community archaeology to produce something new. I suggest that rethinking the point of engagement, by shifting it from stakeholders to the discursive assemblages that cohere as stakeholders come together, allows for a deeper ethnographic reading of the engaging communities and the possibility that they will learn about others as well as themselves. The approach I describe draws from Gilles Deleuze's concept of transcendental empiricism, such that what we do in becoming engaged, even in the most routine way, requires consistently analysing how those we engage with come into view and why they become open to collaboration.
Historical Archaeology, 2018
The making of communities is often treated as a quasi-natural process in which people of similar ... more The making of communities is often treated as a quasi-natural process in which people of similar backgrounds and heritage, or people living in close proximity, form meaningful and mutual ties. Missing here is an appreciation of the ties that bind people to others, that are often beyond their own control. Especially in contexts of inequality, communities form because of shared interests in perpetuating, dismantling, or simply surviving the structures of an unequal distribution of resources. This article investigates the formation of communities of color on eastern Long Island since the 18th century by looking at intersections between race and settlement as evidence for how people of color worked within and against the systems that controlled them. A foundational component of the region's working class, intersecting patterns in class and race formation that complicate the understanding of these mixed-heritage Native American and African American communities are considered.
World Archaeology, 2017
Setauket, New York, a small village on Long Island, has a historical narrative
connecting it to t... more Setauket, New York, a small village on Long Island, has a historical narrative
connecting it to the fabric of colonial and early America. Historic sites and
structures in Setauket provide the setting for this narrative and support its
tourist industry. Additionally, an important minority community comprised of the descendants of colonized Native Americans and enslaved Africans has concrete connections to Setauket’s past. Despite their documented and physical presence, Native Americans and African Americans have been almost entirely left out of local history. The descendant community actively countered their historical marginalization by collaborating with archaeologists to recover aspects of their heritage in the village. This research has developed a counter-narrative that not only returns non-whites to historic white spaces, but explains how non-whites were removed from these spaces through a process of segregation tied to the creation of a leisure economy.
Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic, edited by Michael J. Gall and Richard F. Veit, 2017, pp. 55-68., 2017
Setauket, New York, a small village on Long Island, has a historical narrative connecting it to t... more Setauket, New York, a small village on Long Island, has a historical narrative connecting it to the fabric of colonial and early America. Historic sites and structures in Setauket provide the setting for this narrative and support its tourist industry. Additionally, an important minority community comprised of the descendants of colonized Native Americans and enslaved Africans has
concrete connections to Setauket’s past. Despite their documented and physical presence, Native Americans and African Americans have been almost entirely left out of local history. The descendant community actively countered their historical marginalization by collaborating with archaeologists to recover aspects of their heritage in the village. This research has developed a counter-narrative that not only returns non-whites to historic white spaces, but explains how non-whites were removed from these spaces through a process of segregation tied to the creation of a leisure economy.
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Books by Christopher Matthews
On the significance of this book
“This important collection expands the boundaries of archaeology and charts out an emerging and dynamic field. The eminent contributors, in their consistently powerful and thought-provoking chapters, situate archaeological practice in the ethnographic present, forcing us to reflect on our responsibilities toward the various communities associated with the archaeological past and with archaeology as a discipline. In these pages, archaeology is reconnected with ethnography in a critical, reflexive, and ethically sensitive manner.”
—Yannis Hamilakis, University of Southampton, UK; author of The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece (2007).
Papers by Christopher Matthews
connecting it to the fabric of colonial and early America. Historic sites and
structures in Setauket provide the setting for this narrative and support its
tourist industry. Additionally, an important minority community comprised of the descendants of colonized Native Americans and enslaved Africans has concrete connections to Setauket’s past. Despite their documented and physical presence, Native Americans and African Americans have been almost entirely left out of local history. The descendant community actively countered their historical marginalization by collaborating with archaeologists to recover aspects of their heritage in the village. This research has developed a counter-narrative that not only returns non-whites to historic white spaces, but explains how non-whites were removed from these spaces through a process of segregation tied to the creation of a leisure economy.
concrete connections to Setauket’s past. Despite their documented and physical presence, Native Americans and African Americans have been almost entirely left out of local history. The descendant community actively countered their historical marginalization by collaborating with archaeologists to recover aspects of their heritage in the village. This research has developed a counter-narrative that not only returns non-whites to historic white spaces, but explains how non-whites were removed from these spaces through a process of segregation tied to the creation of a leisure economy.
On the significance of this book
“This important collection expands the boundaries of archaeology and charts out an emerging and dynamic field. The eminent contributors, in their consistently powerful and thought-provoking chapters, situate archaeological practice in the ethnographic present, forcing us to reflect on our responsibilities toward the various communities associated with the archaeological past and with archaeology as a discipline. In these pages, archaeology is reconnected with ethnography in a critical, reflexive, and ethically sensitive manner.”
—Yannis Hamilakis, University of Southampton, UK; author of The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece (2007).
connecting it to the fabric of colonial and early America. Historic sites and
structures in Setauket provide the setting for this narrative and support its
tourist industry. Additionally, an important minority community comprised of the descendants of colonized Native Americans and enslaved Africans has concrete connections to Setauket’s past. Despite their documented and physical presence, Native Americans and African Americans have been almost entirely left out of local history. The descendant community actively countered their historical marginalization by collaborating with archaeologists to recover aspects of their heritage in the village. This research has developed a counter-narrative that not only returns non-whites to historic white spaces, but explains how non-whites were removed from these spaces through a process of segregation tied to the creation of a leisure economy.
concrete connections to Setauket’s past. Despite their documented and physical presence, Native Americans and African Americans have been almost entirely left out of local history. The descendant community actively countered their historical marginalization by collaborating with archaeologists to recover aspects of their heritage in the village. This research has developed a counter-narrative that not only returns non-whites to historic white spaces, but explains how non-whites were removed from these spaces through a process of segregation tied to the creation of a leisure economy.