Nathan Acebo

Indigenous archaeology, community based participatory research, subaltern resistance, Materialism approaches in archaeology, geochemical archaeometry, indigenous epistemologies, North American colonialism, and multiethnic subjectivity formation.

I grew up in the east San Francisco Bay Area and attended Cal Poly Pomona, where I completed my BS in Anthropology with an emphasis in Cultural Resource Management. As a prehistorian and historical archaeologist, my topical and geographic expertise spans from prehistoric village sites in the Mojave Desert and Southern Channel Islands to 19th century Chinatowns in the San Francisco Bay Area and early 20th century Hawaiian sugar plantations. I pursue my research interests by applying my methodological specialties inclusive of geochemical archaeometry, lithic and ceramic macro- and microscopic analyses, GIS visualization and photogrammetry to investigate material evidence. However, my research is conducted following an interdisciplinary approach, under which, I bridge quantitative object-based analyses with information from colonial records, ethnographic archives and active community-based collaboration to holistically contextualize the archaeological record. My dissertation, “Re-Assembling Radical Indigenous Autonomy in the Alta California Hinterlands”, contributes an indigenous archaeology project that highlights politically and economically autonomous indigenous communities living within early 19th century Spanish-colonial Borderlands. 

Indigenous archaeology, community based participatory research, subaltern resistance, Materialism approaches in archaeology, geochemical archaeometry, indigenous epistemologies, North American colonialism, and multiethnic subjectivity formation.