Preservation Technology Podcast

Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration

Catherine Cooper speaks with Rae Gould, Holly Herbster, Steve Mrozowski, and Heather Law Pezzarossi about centering indigenous collaboration in their archaeological work in New England. ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Catherine Cooper: Hello, my name is Catherine Cooper. I am here with... Rae Gould: Hi, I'm Rae Gould and I'm a member of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc. I also serve currently as Executive Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Brown University. Holly Herbster: Holly Herbster. I am in Pawtucket, Rhode Island today, which is where I also work at the Public Archeology Lab, which we refer to as PAL. And I'm a cultural resource management archeologist and a principal investigator at PAL and also a proud graduate of the UMass Boston Historical Archeology Program. Steve Mrozowski: I'm Steve Mrozowski, I'm director of the Fiske Center for Archeological Research and distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Heather Law Pezzarossi: Hi, I'm Heather Law Pezzarossi. I am an assistant professor at Syracuse University. Catherine Cooper: Welcome. So could you introduce how you all met and got started on this project? Rae Gould: I think the first person out of this gang that I became colleague and friend with was Holly. I was serving as the THPO, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, for my tribe. And as part of cultural resource projects, Holly and I would stay connected about projects. Sometimes we would do walkovers together. I had some training under the Mashpee person, Mark Harding, who was working for Quinna at the time, and just immediately connected with Holly. She and PAL in general do their work in really respectful and engaged ways. I wish every archeologist would watch and listen to how they do their work. Met Steve along the way. He was working on the project for Magunkaquog that Holly had done her MA thesis on or was in the process of doing her MA thesis on, but it became a UMass Boston project. And I think at that time he realized there were tribal people in the area as well. And then eventually Steve became one of my professional mentors and was on my committee for my PhD dissertation. And then Heather is one of his students and one of the many people that he has trained over the years on how to do this work. Steve Mrozowski: I think we actually met, Rae, the first time about that there were these wonderful canoes that were discovered in one of the ponds out there, and they asked us whether we would help with their conservation. But as Rae pointed out, I was working on projects in Ashland, Massachusetts, which was Magunkaquog at the time. And then we had the opportunity to do this project with the Hassanamisco. And I had never really collaborated with indigenous folks before that, and in fact had avoided doing the archeology of indigenous North America because I just didn't feel comfortable doing it. But I really didn't have a model of how it could be done properly. And so I talked to Rae and I met with the tribal council and one of the members, Cheryl Holly at the time, actually raised some fairly serious but correct questions about what we did and how we did it. And so I asked them would they support us doing this work because otherwise we weren't going to do that. And they agreed. Then one of the great things about having great students to work with was Heather came along and she and her now husband, Guido Pezzarossi both worked with me on the project at Hassanamesit woods, which started in 2003. And I think one of the things that I do want to say is that I was at Uppsala University on sabbatical in 2016, and I was writing a book that was supposed to be entitled, the Metaphysics of Archeological Practice. And we had been talking, the four of us about writing this book, and I remember getting emails from Rae saying, “So are we going to do this or are we not?” And I remember coming to it like a really big moment and thinking, so how many people you really think are going to read the Metaphysics of Archeological Practice? Nobody cares about that. And I thought, let's do the Nipmuc book as we referred to it. And obviously that was the right choice. Heather Law Pezzarossi: It was a good choice. I started at UMass Boston at the right time. I think that's what it was. For me, I was just starting out when UMass Boston was just starting out organizing and designing a field project at Hassanamesit woods. Steve was already my advisor, I think by that point. But from there I got to meet Rae and I knew of Holly because she had been at UMass Boston before me, but then I got to know Holly better too. And we've just always been in contact ever since. Rae Gould: We had been presenting from the material that we had worked on and the different sites that are talked about in the book. So it was just kind of this organic unfolding, I think where one point we were like, gee, we should put all this together and write a book or something of some sort. Heather Law Pezzarossi: My very first conference presentation ever, it's a weird conference presentation where there were questions after, which doesn't happen all the time. And I was absolutely terrified because I had given the presentation and I thought it was over. And then somebody asked a question that I couldn't answer, and Rae stood up and defended me. And then from there... Holly Herbster: I was there when that conference happened. So I remember that we all sort of bonded together behind our mama bear. You introduced the connections Rae, but for me, this was kind of a transitional thing from the Magunkaquog site being rediscovered as part of a PAL CRM project for a subdivision, and the little bit of research that we got to do as part of that CRM project. We never have enough time to do the testing we want to do or the research we want to do. So I felt like we had kind of scratched the surface and I became really, really interested in trying to find as much documentary information as I could about the site, which was utilized during this period of intense propagandizing of the John Elliot missionary movement and sort of how native people were represented in the records as well as in the physical remains that were in the ground. And when we realized how important that site was, and UMass Boston was able to come in and do sort of the proper, more full, excavation and analysis of the site after PAL had first done some work there. That turned into an opportunity for me to expand that research and worked perfectly as a thesis topic for me. Rae Gould: We were going on 20 years of knowing each other. We had done these presentations, we had been talking very organically about these sites and the fact that no one had really done a Nipmuc specific book. So that was important. And the other element about it that we all agreed on, I think pretty much immediately was that it'd be something that was really accessible, so that anyone from my tribe could pick this up and read, say a 10th grade education. It wasn't theory, it wasn't for our colleagues, although certainly our colleagues use it. It's a great introduction to both archeology. There's a lot of methodology, there's data analysis, there's interpretation, but it's something that even a high schooler could pick up and read and really get to know Nipmuc history and culture through this lens of archeology. That is just, I think, a really great way to share it. Steve Mrozowski: I've learned so much from all of them, and that's true. Holly, I've learned a lot about perseverance and sticking to it. And Heather was just the most wonderful student you can imagine, just to work with. What's kind of unusual to have four different authors actually be authors on the same book and we knew that that might present a challenge. And the editor at the University of Florida Press was really wonderful. And when we decided that the book would be made accessible to just anybody who could read it, that was another challenge worth fighting. And everybody's a good writer, and that really helped. And it's easily the most satisfying experience. I don't think that would've been the case with others, because I have written with other folks and each one is different. I think it was really important that Rae was the one who said, anybody from the tribe has to be able to pick this up and read it. It was a wonderful thing to get to do. Holly Herbster: I have to say that for me as a CRM archeologist, the idea of gray literature surrounds me every day of the week. I feel like we do a lot of writing and research, and that information doesn't go anywhere. It gets filed on a shelf. I am so, so proud of this book and of our group all working together on it. And I feel like this is a book that I would want to read over and over and over again about other types of archeology in other places. And I don't really see books like this a lot, at least the archeology of the northeast, the places that I work. And so I am hopeful that this book, beyond being so important for telling Nipmuc history, will also be the model for other people to start thinking about how are they doing their archeological work, who are they doing it with, and how are they giving that information back out again in a way that's lasting? Rae Gould: So Steve had written a book with a colleague previously called Living on the Boot, and when I read that book, I was like, if I ever write a book, that's the kind of book that I want to write. And I want it to be fun to read. I want it to be engaging and I want it to be educational and didactic at the same time. So I think I said to everybody like, hey, what about using Living on the Boot as a model? I think it works. Holly Herbster: You're right. I amend my statement that I had never read something like that. I did read Living on the Boot, and that is my same impression. Heather Law Pezzarossi: I think the takeaway for this book is going to be different for everybo...