Craig Cipolla

CRAIG N. CIPOLLA, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, was awarded a grant in April 2017 to aid research on ‘Remaking Archaeology: Decolonizing Indigenous-Colonial Histories through Mohegan Collaborative Indigenous Archaeology.’ The Mohegan Archaeology Project is a collaboration between the Mohegan Tribe’including Mohegan archaeologists, tribal historical preservationists, elders, students and docents’and non-Mohegan archaeologists and archaeology students. The project trains the next generation of students in collaborative Indigenous archaeology while collecting and studying new archaeological information on life on the Mohegan Reservation (Uncasville, Connecticut) during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From 2017-2022, Wenner-Gren funding help support: 1) excavation and analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth century Mohegan sites; and 2) videography of the Mohegan Archaeological Project, focusing specifically on how the collaborative process works and how it changes standard archaeological practices to better fit Mohegan interests, needs, and sensitivities. The project sheds new light on eighteenth and nineteenth reservation life, contributing to a more fulsome understanding of regional histories and broader patterns of Indigenous-colonial interaction in North America. The project also offers new perspectives on how collaborative Indigenous archaeology works and how it reshapes the discipline of archaeology by incorporating perspectives that were traditionally left out of archaeological method and theory, namely the perspectives and expertise of Indigenous peoples.