April M. Beisaw

I am an archaeologist who uses the past to critique the present and provide alternative visions of the future. In “Taking Our Water for the City: The Archaeology of New York City’s Watershed Communities” I survey the city’s watershed lands for evidence of the activities that took place there before the city obtained the land and declared it “nature”. Archival sources and community member interviews helped compile the stories necessary to see the true costs of urban water. In “The Archaeology of American Protests” my co-author (Dania Jordan Talley) and I review 400 years of protesting on American soil and examine the people, places, and things that show how protesting is the most public aspect of underlying social movements and the lives of dedicated activists. Although Americans are taught that protesting is a mechanism for creating change, today’s protests are little different from the ones that came before. My newest research is on the past, present, and future of “wild” animals using the archaeological record to understand how the concept of wildness has changed over thousands of years.