Today we’d like to introduce you to Katherine Seeber.
Hi Katherine , we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am archaeologist who focuses on researching Black and Indigenous history in the southern United States. I have been working as an archaeologist in the south for nearly twenty years. I have a BS in Archaeological Science from the State University of New York at Potsdam, and a Masters and PhD in anthropology from Binghamton University. When I was young, maybe 4 or 5 I decided I would be an archaeologist, and just never deviated from wanting that.
I currently own a small consulting firm, Carolina Community Archaeology. My firm works to find lost or hidden stories for local community members or institutions and then make resources to tell those stories like reports, books, illustrations, curriculum, comic books, coloring books, exhibits, etc.
For many years I worked doing field archaeology across the southeastern US searching for archaeology in the margins of our communities. I dug in culverts, swamps, medians, levees, deep in the forests, in old agricultural fields, along the edges of community doing archaeology in service of widening roads, putting in water and fiberoptic lines, and clearing land for development. After digging thousands of holes in hundreds of places I realized I went back to school for my graduate degrees. While getting those degrees, I began doing organizing and community work in both Binghamton, New York, and in the Lowcountry. I began work in the Lowcountry in 2016 doing archaeology on the Sea Pines Shell Ring on Hilton Head Island and have been working here ever since.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not in any way. I come from a small town in rural West Virginia and graduated high school in a rust belt city in western PA. All of my parents have college degrees, but as a millennial, paying for college was not a guarantee. I was lucky to land scholarships that helped me get my first degree.
When I started working professionally, fieldwork in archaeology was still a very male dominated field. There were a lot of hurdles as a woman working “in the field” and in the southern US. It took a lot more as a woman to be hired and kept on and took a lot more to be viewed in a professional, equal manner.
After years of fieldwork, upon arriving to graduate school I encountered different struggles – this time class based. Most of the students and faculty in graduate school were from upper middle to upper class families. I came from Section 8 housing and scrapped my way through blue collar fieldwork in the deep south. When I arrived in Binghamton, New York, I was so different and had such different goals that it was not a comfortable fit. I wanted to continue my education because I saw how archaeology can address the gaps in our collective historic narrative where Indigenous and Black voices should be. I saw archaeology as a chance to create real social change, to address social problems we are navigating today. Many of my peers and professors viewed archaeology more like a sterile science where people were reduced to statistical projections in a model or the act of studying archaeology as an unnecessary but fun “project” without a deeper purpose.
At odds with this, I often then (and still do) clashed with my colleagues about the point of our work. As you can imagine, this has caused all sorts of bumps both large and small.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Carolina Community Archaeology?
My small specializes in community-based archaeology. Unlike other archaeology firms, we work with a lot of families, communities, or community institutions because all sorts of people need help recovering stories from the past. But beyond that, community-based science is a very different *method* of doing science that typical models.
Usually, a scientist or specialist begins a project asking questions from their point of view. An example for archaeology would be “how did the past enslaved people who lived in this spot change their lives after emancipation?”. This question sounds like a great thing to investigate, but its not actually very helpful to the living, descendant community. They know the answer to that question already. A better use of resources and time would be to ask related community members what questions they have instead, and let that drive the research. And example would be “Where did my first free ancestors get their garden seeds from? I want to know if they were able to save their heritage crops (some from Africa, some from Indigenous Americans) and keep growing them after the war, or did they have to get new seeds?”.
There are lots of layers and nuance to the process of community-based science, but the essential part is it is working in service of a living group of people to accomplish a goal, instead of just being focused on government compliance like most archaeology outside of a university is.
I am incredible proud to be able to help located stories of the Lowcountry past that have been lost, and provide resources for all of us here to learn more about this area’s vibrant past. I particularly love the historical illustrations we do. We specialize in using archaeology to help create new watercolor illustrations of people who lived in our community in the past.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Every summer my entire extended family would gather at my Aunt’s house and camp out for weeks together. It is still one of the things I miss the most and I think about it all the time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ccarchaeo.org/
- Instagram: @ccarchaeo
- Facebook: @ccarchaeo
