Archeology With, Not About: Four Collaborators on Nipmuc History

In episode 142 of the National Park Service's Preservation Technology Podcast, host Catherine Cooper of the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training talked with four people who spent some twenty years working together on the archeology of the Nipmuc people in New England — and wrote a book about it, Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration.

The episode: "Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration." National Park Service.

How they came together

Gould first worked with Herbster on cultural resource projects while serving as her tribe's preservation officer, and admired how respectfully Herbster's firm worked. Herbster had studied Magunkaquog, a site in Ashland, Massachusetts, first found during a survey for a housing development; UMass Boston later excavated it more fully. Mrozowski — who had avoided Native American archeology because he had no model for doing it properly — asked the Hassanamisco tribal council whether they would support his team's work, and would not have gone ahead otherwise. A council member had raised serious, and in his view correct, questions about how archeologists worked. The Hassanamesit Woods project followed in 2003, with Law Pezzarossi among the students.

A book anyone could read

After years of presenting their work, the four decided no one had written a Nipmuc-specific book. Gould insisted it be readable by anyone in her tribe — at about a tenth-grade level — while still full of method, data and interpretation. They modeled it on Mrozowski's earlier book Living on the Boot. Four equal authors is unusual, they noted, but it became for each a high point of their careers. The Society for American Archaeology named it scholarly book of the year, and it has already drawn a new Nipmuc student into the field.

Herbster, whose consulting reports usually end up unread on a shelf, hoped it would become a model for giving research back to the people it concerns. The book opens with vignettes of three individuals, bringing the past to life through documents as well as artifacts.

What collaboration takes

• Time. Relationships take years, and academic careers aren't designed for projects that take decades.
• Willingness to be wrong — and to listen, including to long-held grievances. The archeologist's role, Mrozowski said, is not to be the authority.
• Asking first. Gould often has to ask colleagues whether they have even asked a community if it wants the work done, and how their skills could serve it.
• Flexible protocols. Each nation is different; Mrozowski's work with the Shinnecock on Long Island moved from one overall protocol to project-by-project agreements.
• Changing the system. Herbster argued that the Section 106 process and other regulations must allow the time real consultation needs. Mrozowski said convincing university colleagues that community-based research is good science can be harder than earning a tribe's trust.

Looking forward

All four are still working together. Their shared message: archeology has too often treated Indigenous history as if it had ended — but Indigenous people are still here, and the past should serve their future.

Sources

Based on "Podcast 142: Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration," Preservation Technology Podcast, National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The episode's audio, which the imported page did not carry, is restored from the podcast's feed (2026-09-27).