Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration

“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

“Excellent. . . . Based on archival research, oral history, and archaeological excavation and analyses of three sites centered around the Nipmuc people in southern New England, the text . . . tell[s] the stories of both the historical events and the work to understand them.”—Choice

“Using multidisciplinary approaches to documents, oral accounts, material remains, and cultural landscapes . . . from a Native perspective, the authors braid together a cohesive understanding of a Nipmuc presence in their traditional homelands. . . . A history that does more than reveal the past: it paves the way for the future.”—American Antiquity

“A rich and humanistic story of Nipmuc continuance in New England since the 1600s. . . . Offers an in-depth account of silenced regional histories in the heart of the American empire and gestures towards futurity as a major theoretical intervention for collaborative and decolonizing archaeologies.”—Historical Archaeology

“Should be read by all archaeologists . . . because it lays out how archaeologists can, and should, build long-term collaborative relationships with Indigenous communities . . . It is a model for decolonizing archaeology. Archaeology needs this book.”—American Indian Culture and Research Journal