Research

My research is a direct attempt to bridge the gap between archaeologists, anthropologists and Native Americans, to reverse the narratives which explain our invisibility and to assert our presence and vitality as contemporary citizens in the United States. I am greatly interested in the ways in which histories of contact and colonization have been constructed and the role disciplinary boundaries have played in the creation of the Invisible Indian- a population that lies at the margins of academic and popular consciousness. My research among Pueblo peoples in New Mexico was informed by the collaborative methods of my Advisor Robert Preucel at Harvard (now at U.Penn) and by the work of Kent Lightfoot at U.C. Berkeley. Both of these scholars were engaged in collaborative ethnohistorical and archaeological projects within Native American communities in New Mexico and California. Building upon this work, I became interested in the use of historical, ethnographic and archaeological methods in the study of Indigenous resistance movements.