You are here: 麻豆视频 College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Daniel Sayers

Back to top

Photograph of Daniel Sayers

Daniel Sayers Associate Professor CAS | ANTH | Anthropology

Additional Positions at 麻豆视频
Graduate Director, Anthropology
Degrees
PhD, Historical Archaeology, College of William & Mary
MA, Anthropology, Western Michigan University
BA, Philosophy and Anthropology, Western Michigan University

Book Currently Reading
Goldfarb, 2023 Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of our Planet
Bio
Dr. Sayers is a historical archaeologist who has worked across the United States on academic and cultural resource management projects during the past 30 years. He has written on a variety of topics in areas of theory, practice, and issues in the profession today as can be found in his two academic books and his many journal articles and edited volume chapters. As a public-facing researcher, Dr. Sayers has appeared on a whole hatful of television and streaming shows, documentary films, podcasts, radio programs, and other media while also presenting to a variety of public audiences several times per year.
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call 麻豆视频 Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

Fall 2024

  • ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology

  • ANTH-496 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Spatial Anthropology

Spring 2025

  • ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology

Partnerships & Affiliations


  • Member

  • US Fish and Wildlife Service
    In Partnership

  • Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
    In Partnership

  • Great Dismal Swamp Stakeholder Collaborative
    Member

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Research Interests

Exploring the following through a political economic perspective:

  • Diasporas and exile
  • Alienation, estrangement, and the material world
  • Labor, class, and commodities
  • Marronage, Maroon communities, and the (so-called) Underground Railroad
  • Farmsteads and rural cultures
  • Defiance and resistance among the oppressed
  • Community power
  • Multispecies power and inequalities
  • Gender,听family, and kin
  • Homed and unhomed (a.k.a., homeless, unhoused)
  • Race, racism, and racialization

Media Appearances

Recent appearances:

July 2023

Appeared as a collaborative team member in, 鈥淪earching for a Fortress Built by People Who Escaped Slavery鈥, by Matthew Hutson, The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/searching-for-a-fortress-built-by-people-who-escaped-slavery

May 2023

Appeared as Dismal Swamp archaeology expert and commentator on Indigenous American social history in Great Dismal Swamp. In the podcast, Tribal Truths, episode, 鈥淣ansemond Indian Nation: Looking for Ancestors in the Great Dismal Swamp鈥, WVTF, Virginia Public Radio.

https://www.wvtf.org/podcast/tribal-truths/2023-05-25/nansemond-indian-nation-looking-for-ancestors-in-the-great-dismal-swamp

August 2022

American Landscapes w/ host Baratunde Thurston, PBS, Episode 4 on the Mid-Atlantic; appeared as archaeology expert and interviewee with host in the Dismal Swamp.

February 2022

The Underground Railroad, episode 3 in 4-part series on Discovery Science Channel; appeared as archaeology expert in Dismal Swamp segment.

Grants and Sponsored Research

NEH "We the People Collaborative Grant; Canon/National Park Service/American Academy of Arts and Sciences Grant 听 听 听 听

Films/Documentaries

, Smithsonian Channel, 2018.

Selected Publications

Recent Public Works

Sayers, Dan. 2021, . TedEd short film.

Sayers, Daniel O. 2018, , The Doctor T.J Eckleburg Review.

Sayers, Daniel O., 2017, Guest Columnist, "."

Recent Books

*Sayers, Daniel O. (2023).听The Archaeology of the Homed and the Unhomed.听Archaeology of the American Experience, Michael S. Nassaney and Krysta Ryzewski, series eds., University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

听 听 听*听2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award (American Library Association)

Sayers, Daniel O. (2014).听A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. (Second, paperback edition, 2016).

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

Sayers, Daniel O. (2023).听Some Thoughts on Landscape鈥檚 Political-Economic Fissures and Understanding Past Social Radicals.听Thematic volume on 鈥淐racks in Capitalism.鈥, Wurst and Dezsi, eds.听International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

Sayers, Daniel O. (2019). The Radical Antebellum Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia, USA: Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and the Power of Underdeveloped Landscapes.听Revue d鈥檋istoire du XIXe si猫cle听58:125-146.

Sayers, Daniel O., and Justin Uehlein (2018). Animal Emancipation and Historical Archaeology: A Pairing Long Overdue. In,听Critical Animal Studies: Towards Trans-species Social Justice, Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, eds., pp.117-142, Rowman & Littlefield International, London, UK.

Short Fiction

Daniel Owen Sayers, 2018, ,听Poor Yorick Journal