Fraser D. Neiman (Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and Department of Architectural History) is director of archaeology at Monticello, where we are in the midst of several long-term research projects. Among them is the Monticello Plantation Archaeological Survey, a multidisciplinary initiative designed to reveal trajectories of change in settlement and land use on Thomas Jefferson's Albemarle County plantation, along with their ecological, economic, and social causes and consequences. A complementary project, the Monticello Household Archaeology Initiative, explores in greater detail domestic sites discovered by the survey and serves as the venue for the annual Monticello-UVA Archaeological field school.
Monticello's Department of Archaeology is also home to the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, whose aims is encouraging innovative comparative research into the slave societies of the early-modern Atlantic world by serving open-access archaeological data on the web. DAACS data conform to a single set of fine-grained classification and measurement protocols, making possible systematic, quantitative analysis of data on artifacts, assemblages, and their contexts from sites across the North American southeast and the Caribbean. In addition to digitizing previously excavated collections, DAACS has active collaborative fieldwork projects in Jamaica, Nevis, and St. Kitts.
Evolutionary approaches to learning, cognition, and behavior provide the theoretical inspiration for much of Mr Neiman’s empirical work. Theoretical topics of particular interest include style, consumption, markets, and cooperation. He is also interested in quantitative techniques, particularly multivariate and spatial data analysis. Recent course syllabi can be found on his UVa website: http://people.virginia.edu/~fn9r/