Craig N Cipolla
Biographic Data
| ID | 133718 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Craig N Cipolla |
| GIVEN NAMES | Craig N |
| FAMILY NAME | Cipolla |
| SIGNATURE | CIPOLLA C N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tufts University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0668-4517 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 239 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Undoing Things: How Objects, Bodies and Worlds Come Apart
Indigenous Anthropology: Theoretical and Epistemological Challenges and Opportunities
Indigenous anthropology is anthropology practiced with, by, and for Indigenous peoples across the globe. This diverse field includes both cultural and archaeological forms of anthropology. Despite its breadth and diversity, most forms of Indigenous anthropology share a common goal: to transform the discipline’s epistemologies (ways of knowing) by partially untethering them from Western scientific, rationalist modes of inquiry and remaking them in…
Questions Worth Asking: Un-disciplining Archaeology, Reclaiming Pasts for Better Futures
This forum engages an emerging discourse around historical reckoning, truth, and reconciliation, asking how these frameworks inform American archaeology and its future. A growing number of archaeologists are now demanding systemic disciplinary transformations that directly address how white supremacy and settler colonialism enact Indigenous dispossession and erasure as well as anti-Blackness, gender discrimination, and ableism. This forum, featur…
An Acre of Land to Plant or a Stick of Wood to Make a Fence or Fire: An Archaeology of Mohegan Allotment
Although land loss is among the most profound impacts that settler colonialism had for Indigenous societies across North America, archaeologists rarely study one of the principal colonial mechanisms of land dispossession: allotment. This process forever altered the course of North American history, breaking up collectively held Indigenous lands into lots 'owned' by individuals and families while further stressing local Indigenous subsistence patt…
Archaeology's epistemological breadth: Collaborative-Indigenous and ontological turns in historical perspective
Students and staff of the Mohegan archaeological fieldschool excavating an eighteenth-century Mohegan site. Photo by author. • Considers and compares collaborative-Indigenous archaeologies and the ontological turn. • Draws out key similarities and differences between these different approaches. • Contextualizes these approaches in relation to the history of anthropology and archaeology. • Discusses the history of relativist and feminist turns in …
Commentary
Does non-anthropocentrism necessitate a turn away from marginalized people? This is a crucial question, asked lately by a growing number of archaeologists. Some see a turn toward things as a turn away from people, while others take a more nuanced view. Greer falls into the latter group, exploring this question by highlighting important contributions and corrections from Black Studies. Although the paper is framed as a challenge to posthumanism, I…
Archaeology for Today and Tomorrow
Archaeology and capitalism
With Economy and Careful Management: Historical Archaeology, Fort La Cloche, and the Posthumanities
Concordia salus: Becoming Brass Projectiles
Three Little Birds: Reassembling Typological Thought
The typologies that archaeologists use to classify artefacts and situate them chronologically and culturally are crucial tools of the discipline; when left unquestioned, however, they tend to produce reductive and essentializing understandings of the past. Like all theoretical interventions, assemblage theory questions the unquestioned, in this case, asking archaeologists to radically rethink the relationality of the world and the power and vibra…
When Smoking Pipes Grow Fins: Revisiting the Matter-Meaning Dualism in Archaeology
This paper chronicles how Indigenous-made stone "vasiform" smoking pipes from Ontario foster fresh perspectives on archaeological and anthropological approaches to representation and meaning. These discussions often undervalue the material world, whereas recent emphases on "things themselves" tend to neglect issues of representation, meaning, and symbolism. Variations in smoking pipe form, including several examples of pipes that resemble fish, p…
Territorializing Whiteness: An Archaeology of Boy Scout Simulations
This paper provides an archaeological perspective on the Boy Scouts of America, placing special emphasis on Scout camps occupying Mohegan lands in southeastern Connecticut (USA) and focusing on the alteration of Indigenous and Indigenous-colonial sites. Archaeological traces demonstrate how Scouts modified a range of stone features, both ancient and recent, and how they reorganized and redefined the land by naming and bounding their camps. Consid…
Situating Copper Crescents
This report considers copper crescent-shaped objects from Ontario, contextualizing them within broader archaeological discussions of the Old Copper Complex. I focus on a small assemblage of antiquarian-collected crescents from the Royal Ontario Museum. A literature review comprises the bulk of this report; crescents recovered from sites located in the center of the Old Copper Complex, in current-day Wisconsin and Michigan, help to situate example…
Posthuman Potentials: Considering Collaborative Indigenous Archaeology
This essay argues for the diversity and promise of posthuman approaches in archaeology by dispelling blanket critiques, by differentiating between distinct lines of post-anthropocentric thought and by pointing to parallels between Posthumanism and collaborative Indigenous archaeologies. It begins by arguing that symmetrical archaeology is but one part of the diverse body of thought labelled ‘posthuman’. Next, it explores broader posthuman engagem…
Posthuman Archaeologies, Archaeological Posthumanisms
This paper maps and builds relations between posthumanism and the field of archaeology, arguing for vital and promising connections between the two. Posthuman insights on post-anthropocentrism, non-human multiplicities, and the minoritarian in the now intersect powerfully with archaeology's multi-temporal and long-term interests in heterogenous and vibrant assemblages of people, places, and things, particularly the last few decades of 'decolonial…
Practice Theory in Archaeology
Social Archaeology
Failure and Colonialism in the North American Fur Trade: The View from Riverine Assemblages
Representation and materiality in archaeology: A semiotic reconciliation
In this introduction to the special edition, we argue that the theories of philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce have the potential to bridge some of the deepest divides in archaeology. We also demonstrate that the adoption of an extreme 'anti-representational' position in thing-centred turns in the discipline is misguided, as scholars recognize diverse modalities of representation beyond symbols and immaterial signifiers. By combining the insights …
Can birdstones sing? Rethinking material-semiotic approaches in contemporary archaeological theory
Birdstones are an enigmatic and diverse group of objects found across eastern North America with concentrations around the Great Lakes region. Via speculative interpretations of form, analogical comparison with other regions, and consideration of basic contextual information, archaeologists think of birdstones as parts of canoes, flutes, unspecified ceremonial assemblages, and, most frequently, atlatls. Discourse and debate about birdstones large…
Archaeological Theory in Dialogue: Situating Relationality, Ontology, Posthumanism, and Indigenous Paradigms
Taming the Ontological Wolves: Learning from Iroquoian Effigy Objects
Currently on the rise in archaeology, ontological approaches promise new ways of engaging with alterity of various kinds-different people, different times, different forms, even different worlds. This work promises to aid in critical reflections on the arbitrary nature of the Western gaze and to recognize and incorporate non-Western knowledge in new manners. There are, however, several challenges to address. First, as noted by several leading thi…
Theory in Collaborative Indigenous Archaeology: Insights From Mohegan
There is little doubt that Indigenous, collaborative, and community-based archaeologies offer productive means of reshaping the ways in which archaeologists conduct research in North America. Scholarly reporting, however, typically places less emphasis on the ways in which Indigenous and collaborative versions of archaeology influence our interpretations of the past and penetrate archaeology at the level of theory. In this article, we begin to fi…
Recognizing River Power: Watery Views of Ontario’s Fur Trade
Theory in Collaborative Indigenous Archaeology: Insights From Mohegan
There is little doubt that Indigenous, collaborative, and community-based archaeologies offer productive means of reshaping the ways in which archaeologists conduct research in North America. Scholarly reporting, however, typically places less emphasis on the ways in which Indigenous and collaborative versions of archaeology influence our interpretations of the past and penetrate archaeology at the level of theory. In this article, we begin to fi…
Field School Archaeology the Mohegan Way: Reflections on Twenty Years of Community-Based Research and Teaching
In this essay we consider recent developments within the Mohegan Archaeological Field School, a 20-year-old indigenous collaborative archaeology project that runs annually on the Mohegan Reservation in Uncasville, Connecticut, U.S.A. We focus on the impacts of three major transformations: (1) the forging of a new and ever-evolving collaborative relationship between the Tribe and an academic archaeologist (the first author); (2) the appointment of…
Earth flows and lively stone. What differences does 'vibrant' matter make
This essay differentiates between various branches of post-human scholarship as they relate to issues of colonial inequality, social action and politics. Through their critique of human exceptionalism, through their recognition of the vibrancy of matter, and in theirpotentialconnections with politically engaged scholarship, certain lines of post-humanist thought stand to make important contributions to archaeologies of long-term and colonial Indi…
Taming the Ontological Wolves: Learning from Iroquoian Effigy Objects
Currently on the rise in archaeology, ontological approaches promise new ways of engaging with alterity of various kinds-different people, different times, different forms, even different worlds. This work promises to aid in critical reflections on the arbitrary nature of the Western gaze and to recognize and incorporate non-Western knowledge in new manners. There are, however, several challenges to address. First, as noted by several leading thi…
Native American Historical Archaeology and the Trope of Authenticity
Posthuman Archaeologies, Archaeological Posthumanisms
This paper maps and builds relations between posthumanism and the field of archaeology, arguing for vital and promising connections between the two. Posthuman insights on post-anthropocentrism, non-human multiplicities, and the minoritarian in the now intersect powerfully with archaeology's multi-temporal and long-term interests in heterogenous and vibrant assemblages of people, places, and things, particularly the last few decades of 'decolonial…
Posthuman Potentials: Considering Collaborative Indigenous Archaeology
This essay argues for the diversity and promise of posthuman approaches in archaeology by dispelling blanket critiques, by differentiating between distinct lines of post-anthropocentric thought and by pointing to parallels between Posthumanism and collaborative Indigenous archaeologies. It begins by arguing that symmetrical archaeology is but one part of the diverse body of thought labelled ‘posthuman’. Next, it explores broader posthuman engagem…
Recognizing River Power: Watery Views of Ontario’s Fur Trade
Signs of identity, signs of memory
This essay explores everyday practices as sites of memory-making, arguing that such practices have the potential to serve as markers and makers of cultural identity. I use frameworks of social memory to interpret 19th-century butchery practices on the Eastern Pequot reservation in North Stonington, Connecticut. Colonialism meant change for Pequot peoples, including shifts in family structures and the adoption of mass produced material culture. I …
Representation and materiality in archaeology: A semiotic reconciliation
In this introduction to the special edition, we argue that the theories of philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce have the potential to bridge some of the deepest divides in archaeology. We also demonstrate that the adoption of an extreme 'anti-representational' position in thing-centred turns in the discipline is misguided, as scholars recognize diverse modalities of representation beyond symbols and immaterial signifiers. By combining the insights …
Textual Artifacts, Artifactual Texts: An Historical Archaeology of Brothertown Writing
Archaeological Theory in Dialogue: Situating Relationality, Ontology, Posthumanism, and Indigenous Paradigms
Can birdstones sing? Rethinking material-semiotic approaches in contemporary archaeological theory
Birdstones are an enigmatic and diverse group of objects found across eastern North America with concentrations around the Great Lakes region. Via speculative interpretations of form, analogical comparison with other regions, and consideration of basic contextual information, archaeologists think of birdstones as parts of canoes, flutes, unspecified ceremonial assemblages, and, most frequently, atlatls. Discourse and debate about birdstones large…
Peopling the Place, Placing the People: An Archaeology of Brothertown Discourse
Brothertown" was the name given a multitribal Christian settlement of English-speaking native peoples that was founded in the late eighteenth century. In this essay I explore the give-and-take of social identity from the perspective of written correspondence between Brothertown Indians and outsiders, both Indian and Euroamerican. I focus specifically on the name Brothertown, tracing its emergence and transformation through time and assessing its …
Zooarchaeological Evidence for Animal Husbandry and Foodways at Sylvester Manor
Analysis of over 12,000 zooarchaeological specimens recovered from Sylvester Manor provides archaeological evidence to complement the limited historical information about stock raising and food consumption on the plantation. The analyzed collection derives from the south lawn midden deposit at the site, and contains primarily the remains of domestic sheep, cattle, and pigs. The domestic animal ages, based on tooth eruption and wear, suggest aspec…
When Smoking Pipes Grow Fins: Revisiting the Matter-Meaning Dualism in Archaeology
This paper chronicles how Indigenous-made stone "vasiform" smoking pipes from Ontario foster fresh perspectives on archaeological and anthropological approaches to representation and meaning. These discussions often undervalue the material world, whereas recent emphases on "things themselves" tend to neglect issues of representation, meaning, and symbolism. Variations in smoking pipe form, including several examples of pipes that resemble fish, p…
Commemoration, Community, and Colonial Politics At Brothertown
The Brothertown Indian community formed in the late eighteenth century when Christian factions of several Algonquian tribes from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and coastal New York moved west together in hopes of escaping the land politics and corrupting influences of colonial culture on the East Coast. The community settled in central New York State for a time, but relocated once again to current-day Brothertown, Wisconsin in the 1830s. Established …
Questions Worth Asking: Un-disciplining Archaeology, Reclaiming Pasts for Better Futures
This forum engages an emerging discourse around historical reckoning, truth, and reconciliation, asking how these frameworks inform American archaeology and its future. A growing number of archaeologists are now demanding systemic disciplinary transformations that directly address how white supremacy and settler colonialism enact Indigenous dispossession and erasure as well as anti-Blackness, gender discrimination, and ableism. This forum, featur…
An Acre of Land to Plant or a Stick of Wood to Make a Fence or Fire: An Archaeology of Mohegan Allotment
Although land loss is among the most profound impacts that settler colonialism had for Indigenous societies across North America, archaeologists rarely study one of the principal colonial mechanisms of land dispossession: allotment. This process forever altered the course of North American history, breaking up collectively held Indigenous lands into lots 'owned' by individuals and families while further stressing local Indigenous subsistence patt…
Concordia salus: Becoming Brass Projectiles
Failure and Colonialism in the North American Fur Trade: The View from Riverine Assemblages
Zooarchaeological Evidence for Animal Husbandry and Foodways at Sylvester Manor
Analysis of over 12,000 zooarchaeological specimens recovered from Sylvester Manor provides archaeological evidence to complement the limited historical information about stock raising and food consumption on the plantation. The analyzed collection derives from the south lawn midden deposit at the site, and contains primarily the remains of domestic sheep, cattle, and pigs. The domestic animal ages, based on tooth eruption and wear, suggest aspec…
Signs of identity, signs of memory
This essay explores everyday practices as sites of memory-making, arguing that such practices have the potential to serve as markers and makers of cultural identity. I use frameworks of social memory to interpret 19th-century butchery practices on the Eastern Pequot reservation in North Stonington, Connecticut. Colonialism meant change for Pequot peoples, including shifts in family structures and the adoption of mass produced material culture. I …
Commemoration, Community, and Colonial Politics At Brothertown
The Brothertown Indian community formed in the late eighteenth century when Christian factions of several Algonquian tribes from Rhode Island, Connecticut, and coastal New York moved west together in hopes of escaping the land politics and corrupting influences of colonial culture on the East Coast. The community settled in central New York State for a time, but relocated once again to current-day Brothertown, Wisconsin in the 1830s. Established …
Textual Artifacts, Artifactual Texts: An Historical Archaeology of Brothertown Writing
Peopling the Place, Placing the People: An Archaeology of Brothertown Discourse
Brothertown" was the name given a multitribal Christian settlement of English-speaking native peoples that was founded in the late eighteenth century. In this essay I explore the give-and-take of social identity from the perspective of written correspondence between Brothertown Indians and outsiders, both Indian and Euroamerican. I focus specifically on the name Brothertown, tracing its emergence and transformation through time and assessing its …
Native American Historical Archaeology and the Trope of Authenticity
Rethinking Colonialism: Comparative Archaeological Approaches
The editors have brought together archaeologists specializing in Old and New World colonialism, both ancient and modern, to explore colonial consequences by engaging in dialogue with one another over consumption practices, diaspora and movement, representations of time, and archaeology's connection to descendent communities in contemporary practice and interpretation.
Rethinking Colonialism: Comparative Archaeological Approaches
Field School Archaeology the Mohegan Way: Reflections on Twenty Years of Community-Based Research and Teaching
In this essay we consider recent developments within the Mohegan Archaeological Field School, a 20-year-old indigenous collaborative archaeology project that runs annually on the Mohegan Reservation in Uncasville, Connecticut, U.S.A. We focus on the impacts of three major transformations: (1) the forging of a new and ever-evolving collaborative relationship between the Tribe and an academic archaeologist (the first author); (2) the appointment of…
Native American Diaspora and Ethnogenesis
This chapter considers the current state and future of archaeological studies of Native American diaspora and ethnogenesis. It begins with an exploration of the broader literature concerning diaspora and ethnogenesis, comparing these branches of scholarship with the specific conditions—epistemological, historical, and political—of archaeologies of indigenous North America. The challenges and benefits of studying Native American diaspora and ethno…
Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium: Introducing Current Perspectives
"Provides an accessible account of the changing world of archaeological theory. It charts the emergence of the new emphasis on relations as well as engaging with current theoretical trends and the thinkers archaeologists regularly employ. This book will be an essential guide to cutting-edge theory for students and for professionals wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field. Oliver J.T. Harris is lecturer in archaeology in the School of Arc…
Recognizing River Power: Watery Views of Ontario’s Fur Trade
Earth flows and lively stone. What differences does 'vibrant' matter make
This essay differentiates between various branches of post-human scholarship as they relate to issues of colonial inequality, social action and politics. Through their critique of human exceptionalism, through their recognition of the vibrancy of matter, and in theirpotentialconnections with politically engaged scholarship, certain lines of post-humanist thought stand to make important contributions to archaeologies of long-term and colonial Indi…
Taming the Ontological Wolves: Learning from Iroquoian Effigy Objects
Currently on the rise in archaeology, ontological approaches promise new ways of engaging with alterity of various kinds-different people, different times, different forms, even different worlds. This work promises to aid in critical reflections on the arbitrary nature of the Western gaze and to recognize and incorporate non-Western knowledge in new manners. There are, however, several challenges to address. First, as noted by several leading thi…
Theory in Collaborative Indigenous Archaeology: Insights From Mohegan
There is little doubt that Indigenous, collaborative, and community-based archaeologies offer productive means of reshaping the ways in which archaeologists conduct research in North America. Scholarly reporting, however, typically places less emphasis on the ways in which Indigenous and collaborative versions of archaeology influence our interpretations of the past and penetrate archaeology at the level of theory. In this article, we begin to fi…
Practice Theory in Archaeology
Social Archaeology
Failure and Colonialism in the North American Fur Trade: The View from Riverine Assemblages
Representation and materiality in archaeology: A semiotic reconciliation
In this introduction to the special edition, we argue that the theories of philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce have the potential to bridge some of the deepest divides in archaeology. We also demonstrate that the adoption of an extreme 'anti-representational' position in thing-centred turns in the discipline is misguided, as scholars recognize diverse modalities of representation beyond symbols and immaterial signifiers. By combining the insights …
Can birdstones sing? Rethinking material-semiotic approaches in contemporary archaeological theory
Birdstones are an enigmatic and diverse group of objects found across eastern North America with concentrations around the Great Lakes region. Via speculative interpretations of form, analogical comparison with other regions, and consideration of basic contextual information, archaeologists think of birdstones as parts of canoes, flutes, unspecified ceremonial assemblages, and, most frequently, atlatls. Discourse and debate about birdstones large…
Archaeological Theory in Dialogue: Situating Relationality, Ontology, Posthumanism, and Indigenous Paradigms
Situating Copper Crescents
This report considers copper crescent-shaped objects from Ontario, contextualizing them within broader archaeological discussions of the Old Copper Complex. I focus on a small assemblage of antiquarian-collected crescents from the Royal Ontario Museum. A literature review comprises the bulk of this report; crescents recovered from sites located in the center of the Old Copper Complex, in current-day Wisconsin and Michigan, help to situate example…
Posthuman Potentials: Considering Collaborative Indigenous Archaeology
This essay argues for the diversity and promise of posthuman approaches in archaeology by dispelling blanket critiques, by differentiating between distinct lines of post-anthropocentric thought and by pointing to parallels between Posthumanism and collaborative Indigenous archaeologies. It begins by arguing that symmetrical archaeology is but one part of the diverse body of thought labelled ‘posthuman’. Next, it explores broader posthuman engagem…
Posthuman Archaeologies, Archaeological Posthumanisms
This paper maps and builds relations between posthumanism and the field of archaeology, arguing for vital and promising connections between the two. Posthuman insights on post-anthropocentrism, non-human multiplicities, and the minoritarian in the now intersect powerfully with archaeology's multi-temporal and long-term interests in heterogenous and vibrant assemblages of people, places, and things, particularly the last few decades of 'decolonial…
Territorializing Whiteness: An Archaeology of Boy Scout Simulations
This paper provides an archaeological perspective on the Boy Scouts of America, placing special emphasis on Scout camps occupying Mohegan lands in southeastern Connecticut (USA) and focusing on the alteration of Indigenous and Indigenous-colonial sites. Archaeological traces demonstrate how Scouts modified a range of stone features, both ancient and recent, and how they reorganized and redefined the land by naming and bounding their camps. Consid…
Archaeology (29 works) · History (29 works) · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies (27 works) · Sociology (22 works) · History (20 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (19 works) · Anthropology (18 works) · Colonialism (14 works) · Indigenous (13 works) · Art (12 works)