The Fiske Center Blog

Weblog for the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

To Dominica

February 29, 2012 by John Steinberg | 0 comments

 A few of us are off to the Caribbean island of Dominica to test out some Geophysical methods and techniques.  Mark Hauser of Northwestern is running the operation consulting with Ken Kelly of the University of South Carolina.  The  expedition is funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation. Flying down with me is UMass Boston Historic Archaeology Program graduate Kathryn “Kat” Catlin and we will meet long time collaborators Doug Bolender  (Field Museum) and Brian Damiata (UCLA) in San Juan before flying to Dominica.  We plan to test out conductivity using the EM-31 and EM-38,  try a little GPR, and some magnetometry.   We are planning to test this equipment out at two sites:  Sugar Loaf and Bois Cotlette (marked by pins in the map at the top left) . We will be looking at the geophysical contrasts left behind by the household remains of enslaved laborers.

Author: John Steinberg

Dr. John Steinberg has been a Research Scientist at the Fiske Center since 2006. He received his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA in 1997. Before coming to UMass Boston, John taught at UCLA and California State University Northridge. He is interested in the economic problems of colonization, both in New England and across the North Atlantic. He uses GIS and shallow geophysics to study settlement patterns to understand broad trends over the landscape. In addition to John's New England work, he has been studying the settlement patterns of Viking Age Iceland. John is the director of the Digital Archaeology Laboratory at the Fiske Center.

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