Email: cranford@unc.edu
Phone:
Office:
107 Alumni Building
Area of Interest:
Historic period archaeology of the Catawba Nation; colonowares and market production; coalescent communities and ethnogenesis; households; Mississippian and Caddoan archaeology, public archaeology.
Education:
2012 ABD in Anthropology- University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill
2007 MA in Anthropology- University of Oklahoma
2002 BS in Anthropology- Appalachian State University
Research & Activities:
My dissertation research is an archaeological study of household organization, production and variability within the multiethnic Indian community known as the Catawba Nation during the Early Federal period (c. 1780-1800). This project is part of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology’s (RLA) Catawba Project and will focus primarily on two late 18th century Catawba domestic sites, Old Town and Ayers Town, located near Rock Hill, South Carolina. Evidence from this period suggests that substantial cultural and societal transformations took place during a relatively short time as the community struggled to respond to severe population loss, coalescence, encroaching white settlers, and emerging capitalist markets all within the context of global colonial rivalries and conflict. I suggest that by examining Catawba household organization and production archaeologically, it will be possible to better understand how the Catawba Nation coped with and responded to social, economic and political changes that took place during and following the colonial period.
Selected Publications:
2011 Multiple Modes of Monumentality: Case Studies from the American South. Invited publication in The SAA Archaeological Record 11(4) 33-37. (Co-authored with Megan C. Kassabaum and Erin Stevens Nelson).
2009 Geoarchaeology and the Cross Timbers. Edited by David J. Cranford, Elsbeth L. Dowd and Don G. Wyckoff. Oklahoma Anthropological Society, Memoir 13.
2006 The Ewing Chapel Mound Site, Adair County, Oklahoma. Oklahoma Anthropological Society Bulletin 54(1): 34-40. (Co-authored with Tom Pluckhahn and Luther Leith)
Selected Presentations:
Invited Symposia
2012 Household distributions of Ceramics in the Catawba Nation ca. 1760-1800. Poster presented at the Center for the Study of the American South Southern Research Circle, Chapel Hill, NC.
2012 Colonial Catawbas: A Household Perspective of Community Realignment. Paper presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Meeting in Baltimore, MD.
2011 Palimpsests of Meaning in Southeastern Platform Mounds. Paper presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Jacksonville, FL (Co-authored with Megan C. Kassabaum and Erin S. Nelson).
General Sessions
2012 An Overview of the 2012 Field Season at the Feltus Mounds. Paper presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Baton Rouge, LA (Co-authored with John W. O’Hear, Vincas P. Steponaitis, Megan C. Kassabaum and Erin S. Nelson).
2012 Household distributions of Ceramics in the Catawba Nation ca. 1760-1800. Poster presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Baton Rouge, LA
2012 Tracing Persistence through Coalescence: Cheraws in the Catawba Nation. Paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology Meeting in Memphis, TN (Co-authored with Mary Elizabeth Fitts).
2011 Investigations at the Ayers Town and Ashe Ferry Sites, York County, South Carolina. Poster presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Jacksonville, FL (Co-authored with Brett Riggs, R.P. Stephen Davis, Jr., and Mary Elizabeth Fitts).
2010 Multiple Modes of Monumentality: Case Studies from the American South. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Meeting in New Orleans, LA. (Co-authored with Meg Kassabaum, Erin Nelson).
2010 Don’t Throw the Body (Sherd) Out with the Bath Water: Estimating the Whole Vessel Assemblage from Occaneechi Town. Paper presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference Meeting in Lexington, KY.
2009 Multivariate Analyses of Conjoined Burial Mounds in Eastern Oklahoma. Poster presented at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference Meeting in Mobile, AL.
2009 Social Implications of Conjoined Burial Mounds in the Northern Caddoan Area. Paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology Meeting in Atlanta, Ga.