Benjamin D. Siegel

Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Anthropological Studies Center

Benjamin D. Siegel

Contact

ben.siegel@sonoma.edu

My research interests include topics in California Archaeology, North American Archaeology
and History, Underwater and Coastal Archaeology, and Environmental Archaeology. Recent
research efforts have consisted of the interdisciplinary examination of the outcomes of long-term
interactions between people and the environments they occupy with a particular focus on
human interactions within island and coastal ecologies. This work combines archaeological,
geoarchaeological, ethnographic, and archival research methods to explore how land-use
practices transform environmental conditions over time and how environmental conditions, in-
turn, impact human cultures. My dissertation research explored the environmental archaeology
and history of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and
other granting institutions, this work explores the environmental outcomes from centuries of
intensified sugarcane planting through the archaeological survey of the island’s colonial-era
water-management features, geoarchaeological analyses of soils from Estate Little Princess (an
active plantation for over 200 years), and community-based ethnographic research with
contemporary Crucian farmers.
In addition to serving as an Assistant Professor within the Human Development and Applied
Anthropology program, I also serve as the Director of the Anthropological Studies Center (ASC),
the nonprofit cultural resource management firm connected to Sonoma State University (SSU). I
bring to this role over 16 years of experience conducting compliance-based cultural resource
management (CRM) efforts across California, the eastern United States, and Central America.
As both a core faculty member of SSU’s Cultural Heritage and Resources Management M.S.
program and Director of the ASC, I seek to bridge the gap for SSU students between applied
anthropological education in the classroom and hands-on/experiential learning and training
opportunities on active CRM projects.

Throughout my career I have directed numerous archaeological investigations examining
cultures that have occupied coastal or island environments across California, the southeastern
United States and the Circum-Caribbean. These efforts have included work on historic-era
coastal settlements, plantations, fortifications, commercial centers, beached and submerged
shipwrecks, and precontact-era occupation sites across the coastlines of California, Florida,
Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Jamaica, Belize, and Nicaragua.
Particularly noteworthy efforts include: the recordation of precontact-era occupation sites along
the San Francisco Bay, the development of an archaeological site inventory across the coast of
the Florida panhandle, an examination of the colonial-era maritime cultural landscape of
Bluefields Bay, Jamaica involving underwater and coastal archaeological survey and site
recordation, and a reconnaissance survey and cataloging of precontact-era archaeological sites
in the Rivas Isthmus and along the coast of Lake Nicaragua. Beyond my archaeological
research experience I am also a well-practiced archival researcher, having conducted grant- or
private sector-based investigations at the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen, the British National
Library and the British National Archives at Kew, the US Library of Congress, the US National
Archives, and numerous other US state and territory libraries to develop historical contexts for a
wide range of cultural and historical investigations.