Daniel Sayers Associate Professor CAS | ANTH | Anthropology
- Additional Positions at AU
- 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 has some 30 years of field- and U.S.-based experience in archaeology and anthropology that he brings to students in the classroom and in his mentoring. He has worked with many undergraduate and graduate students in helping them gain practical know-how in the profession and related areas, such as filmmaking, historiography, and museum studies. He works to help students understand the ways of anthropological thinking as well as the deep traditions of theory and practice in the profession. Dr. Sayers welcomes working with students with interests in all areas of anthropology, including archaeology, biocultural, linguistic and ethnographic anthropology as well as those in other disciplines outside of Anthropology proper. His interests, research efforts and modes of anthropological engagement with the world are many and varied as you can read about below.
- For the Media
- To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
Teaching
Fall 2024
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ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology
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ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology
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ANTH-496 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Spatial Anthropology
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ANTH-496 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Spatial Anthropology
Spring 2025
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ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology
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ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology
Partnerships & Affiliations
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American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
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, 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, “Searching for a Fortress Built by People Who Escaped Slavery”, 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, “Nansemond Indian Nation: Looking for Ancestors in the Great Dismal Swamp”, 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
Films/Documentaries
Escape to the Great Dismal Swamp, Smithsonian Channel, 2018.
Selected Publications
Recent Public Works
Sayers, Dan. 2021, The Secret Society of the Great Dismal Swamp. TedEd short film.
Sayers, Daniel O. 2018, A Modest Firearms Proposal, The Doctor T.J Eckleburg Review.
Sayers, Daniel O., 2017, Guest Columnist, "The Shepard House Has Alot to Teach Us."
Recent Books
*Sayers, Daniel O. (2023). The Archaeology of the Homed and the Unhomed. Archaeology of the American Experience, Michael S. Nassaney and Krysta Ryzewski, series eds., University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
* 2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award (American Library Association)
Sayers, Daniel O. (2014). 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). Some Thoughts on Landscape’s Political-Economic Fissures and Understanding Past Social Radicals. Thematic volume on “Cracks in Capitalism.”, Wurst and Dezsi, eds. 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. Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle 58:125-146.
Sayers, Daniel O., and Justin Uehlein (2018). Animal Emancipation and Historical Archaeology: A Pairing Long Overdue. In, 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, The Omphalos of Pritchard McCovey, Poor Yorick Journal