Colin Porter
Areas of Interest:
I am a sixth-year graduate student concentrating in historical archaeology. My research focuses on colonialism, material culture, and social memory in northeastern North America. I am particularly interested in the relationships among and between Native Americans, African Americans, and Anglo Americans in 17th- and 18th-century New England, and how those relationships have been and continue to be remembered. My dissertation investigates reconstructed fortified houses, which had been burned down during King Philip's War (1675-6), as places of reengagement between Native and colonial peoples. I use a multi-stranded approach drawing together historical documents and material culture (landscapes, architecture, and artifacts) to understand the relationship between war's end and slavery's beginning along the Rhode Island frontier. Previously, I studied the advent of gravestone placement in New England as a cultural reaction to King Philip's War. I am also a member of the Long Range Site Planning Committee of the Cocumscussoc Association at Smith's Castle, the historic preservation organization which oversees the Cocumscussoc Archaeological Site in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
Status: Post field
Previous Degrees:
MA, Brown University; BA, Amherst College
Website:
http://proteus.brown.edu/porter/home
Contact Information: Colin_Porter@brown.edu
