Staff Spotlight
Dr. Kathleen Deagan
Distinguished Research Curator of Archaeology
102 Dickinson Hall
Museum Road & Newell Drive
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-1916
Email: kd@flmnh.ufl.edu
Ph.D. University of Florida, 1974
Research Interests
Historical archaeology, specifically culture contact and ethnogenesis; Spanish colonial studies and historic period material culture systematics.
Ongoing Fieldwork
My archaeological research program in has been designed to reveal and explain the mechanisms and consequences of encounter and exchange among Spaniards, American Indians and Africans in the American colonies, using archaeological data as a foundation. The specific object of this inquiry has been to trace the cultural transformations that were at the root of multicultural Latin American society as we experience it today, and to gain insights that are relevant not only to history and anthropology, but also to contemporary society. To this end, I have directed annual excavations both in St. Augustine, Florida for 30 years, and in Haiti and the Dominican Republic each year for the past 20 years. These efforts have produced one of the largest systematic, contextually controlled bodies of historical archaeological data in the country, and have provided the basis for dozens of journal articles, at least 12 books, 13 Ph.D. dissertations and 21 MA theses.
Courses Taught
- Seminar in the Method and Theory of Archaeology
- Field Methods in Archaeology (graduate and undergraduate)
- Analysis, Interpretation and Explanation in Historical Archaeology
- Seminar in Historical Archaeology
- Seminar in Historic Material Culture, 1500-1800
Graduate Students
Gifford Waters, Ph.D. Candidate
Email: gwaters - add "@ufl.edu" for full address
- Identity maintenance and change among mission Indian groups in eighteenth century Spanish St. Augustine
Deborah Mullins, Ph.D. Candidate
Email: dmullins - add "@ufl.edu" for full address
- Expressions of Spanish identity in the global economic homogenization period of the late eighteenth century: Florida and Mexico
Jamie Waters, Ph.D. Candidate
Email: jandersn - add "@ufl.edu" for full address
- The archaeology of children and agency in colonial St. Augustine
Ingrid Newquist, M.A./Ph.D. Candidate
- Spanish colonial contact period
Laurie Rinfret, MALAS
Email: laurier - add "@housing.ufl.edu" for full address
- Reanalysis and interpretation of John Goggin's 1960 excavations of Spanish mission sites in in the Valley of Mexico
Pauline Kulstad, MALAS
Email: pkulstad - add "@ufl.edu" for full address
- Interpreting the site of Concepción de la Vega (1500-1562) Dominican Republic, to the public
Representative Publications
1983 Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole Community. New York, Academic Press.
1987 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500-1800 (Vol 1: Ceramics, glassware and beads). Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press (Vol I: Ceramics and Glassware).
1995 Puerto Real: The archaeology of a sixteenth century Spanish town in Hispaniola. University Press of Florida
1995 Ft. Mose: Colonial America's Black Fortress of Freedom. (with Darcie McMahon) Gainesville: University Press of Florida
1998 Rethinking modern history. Archaeology (1998 Special 50th anniversary issue) 51(5):54-60.
2002 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies: Florida and the Caribbean, 1500-1800 (Vol. II: Portable, personal possessions) Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
2002 Archaeology at America's First European Town: La Isabela, 1493-1498 (With Jose M. Cruxent). New Haven: Yale University Press.
2003 Colonial Origins and Colonial Transformation in Spanish America. Historical Archaeology 37(4):3-14
2004 Reconsidering Taíno Social Dynamics after Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture contact Studies. American Antiquity 69(4):597-626