The Stanford Archaeology Center’s Second Annual Black Archaeology Event, titled “Black Archaeology: An Intergenerational Conversation”, is an intergenerational conversation between Black archaeologists who paved the way for Black Studies to be integrated into Archaeology. In an informal environment full of conversation between students, staff, and community members, Dr. Theresa Singleton from Syracuse University and Dr. Jodi Skipper from the University of Mississippi shared their oral histories of how they came to pursue studies in Black archaeology and they gave advice for future archaeologists hoping to pursue similar studies. This event was open to the public. No background experience or knowledge of Black Studies or Archaeology wasnecessary; everyone from all backgrounds and walks of life are encouraged to learn and attend.The event was held in the Stanford Archaeology Center (Building 500 Room 106) and on Zoom on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 from 5:30PM-6:30PM.
Speakers
Theresa A. Singleton, PhD
Theresa A. Singleton is Professor of Anthropology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY , USA. She began her archaeological studies of slavery on former plantation sites along the coastal areas of Georgia, USA, for her PhD dissertation at the University of Florida. She has published widely on various aspects on the Archaeology of the African Diaspora, and as a former museum curator, contributed to the development of exhibitions on African American life and related subjects. In the1990s, she expanded her interests to include the Caribbean where she conducted a study of slavery in Cuba and authored, Slavery behind the Wall: An Archaeology of a Cuban CoffeePlantation (University Press of Florida, 2015). She is currently undertaking exploratory archaeological research in the Dominican Republic to identify and locate Afro-descendant sites, including those of enslaved, maroon, and free communities.
She is an elected member of American Antiquarian Society, a Fellow of the London Society of Antiquaries, and in 2014, she received the Society for Historical Archaeology’s J. C. Harrington Metal for her lifetime contributions to Historical Archaeology. She was awarded a Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions at University of Cambridge, England, for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Jodi Skipper, PhD
Jodi Skipper is a Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. During her time at the University, she has worked with Behind the Big House, a slave dwelling interpretation program in Mississippi, which expanded to the state of Arkansas. In 2017, Skipper was awarded one of eight Whiting Foundation Public Humanities fellowships to develop a website, behindthebighouse.org, to help make the program model more accessible to individuals and institutions thinking through how they might incorporate slavery into historic site narratives. She co-edited (with Michele Coffey) the book Navigating Souths: Transdisciplinary Explorations of a US Region in 2017 and, in 2022, published an autoethnography, Behind the Big House: Reconciling, Slavery, Race and Heritage in the U.S. South with the University of Iowa Press’s Humanities and Public Life Series.
