Isaac Shearn earned his PhD in 2014 at the University of Florida and is an adjunct professor at the Community College of Baltimore County, University of Baltimore, and Coppin State University. His research is on the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Caribbean and South America, with a focus on public archaeology, developing inclusive and participatory methods. His recent efforts have been oriented toward integrating three-dimensional photogrammetric mapping techniques with more traditional archaeological methods. Supervisors: Michael J. Heckenberger, James B. Petersen, and John G. Crock
A short video I compiled of clips the crew and I recorded regularly throughout my year-long disse... more A short video I compiled of clips the crew and I recorded regularly throughout my year-long dissertation fieldwork in Dominica. In this video, recorded early in the project, all the members of the crew introduce themselves, and two vignettes, "The Mortar Controversy," and "Eagle Eyes," capture moments from our exploratory pedestrian survey.
A collection of interviews with canoe builders in Dominica filmed over a period of time between 2... more A collection of interviews with canoe builders in Dominica filmed over a period of time between 2012 and 2013. This was intended to accompany my 2020 article "Canoe societies in the Caribbean: Ethnography, archaeology, and ecology of precolonial canoe manufacturing and voyaging," published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Volume 57, March 2020, 101140, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101140
Harvesting clay for a collaborative educational activity Marcus Cuffy and I designed while doing ... more Harvesting clay for a collaborative educational activity Marcus Cuffy and I designed while doing my dissertation research in Dominica between 2012 and 2013. For these activities, we would visit primary schools around Dominica and give a 30-minute talk about archaeology and the island's pre-Colonial history, focusing on ancient technology. Then we would have an arts and crafts lesson in which Marcus and I would teach the students to make coil constructed pottery with local clays that we would later analyze through neutron activation analysis. We incorporated theory, history, heritage, practice and fun into one activity, and then took it to several schools around Dominica. This video contains footage from when Marcus and I were harvesting clay with a local potter who was showing where he collected clay. It also includes a montage of photographs taken during the activities at the various primary schools.
The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Apr 27, 2017
ABSTRACT Radiocarbon age estimates from a micro-regional survey of Eastern Dominica provide a chr... more ABSTRACT Radiocarbon age estimates from a micro-regional survey of Eastern Dominica provide a chronological framework for Ceramic Age (ca. 400 BC to AD 1492) settlements and population movements in relation to inter-island communities of the Windward Islands. This report covers the design of the survey, the recovery context of the radiocarbon samples, and the implications for the future of research involving Dominica. Although only a small number of radiocarbon age estimates are reported, these are among the first published from systematically excavated pre-Columbian contexts in Dominica.
Les matériaux lithiques dans le registre archéologique ont toujours été l'objet d'une att... more Les matériaux lithiques dans le registre archéologique ont toujours été l'objet d'une attention particulière de la part des archéologues, surtout dans les contextes préhistoriques. Ils suscitent une telle attention grâce à leur excellente préservation et au potentiel important qu’ils possèdent pour fournir des informations sur les comportements passés, y compris la mobilité des biens et des personnes grâce aux études de provenance. Bien qu'ils ne représentent pas la majorité du corpus archéologique dans les sites archéologiques précoloniaux des Petites Antilles, où la céramique et l’outillage sur coquille domine, leur diversité géologique nécessite de regrouper des connaissances, des méthodes et des compétences variées afin de les étudier. Ici, nous présentons les résultats préliminaires de spécialistes en caractérisation des roches volcaniques, silicites et roches vertes.Pour la première fois, plusieurs artefacts en verre volcanique ont été identifiés sur des sites du C...
A Place for Memory: Baltimore's Historic Laurel Cemetery, 2023
This chapter answers the crucial questions of why the cemetery was allowed to decline, how it was... more This chapter answers the crucial questions of why the cemetery was allowed to decline, how it was demolished in spite of legal challenges, and exactly who profited from the eventual re-zoning and redevelopment. Due to the laws in place at its initial incorporation in 1852, the Laurel Cemetery Company was not owned or incorporated by African Americans, although servicing the African American community. This characteristic of ownership remained unchanged up to and after the cemetery’s demolition. We reveal how the opposing interests of cemetery owners and lot owners manifested in the decline of the property and an eventual legal battle to halt demolition—a demolition that lot owners only learned of once bulldozers were witnessed on the property. The story of Laurel Cemetery’s demolition is a narrowly legal saga of collusion, conflict of interest, and self-dealing by individuals within the Baltimore City Solicitor’s office. This injustice brough great profit to a few at the immeasurable expense of many.
The nature and degree of human modifications of humid tropical forests in Amazonia have been wide... more The nature and degree of human modifications of humid tropical forests in Amazonia have been widely debated over the past two decades. Many regions provide significant evidence of late Holocene anthropogenic influence by settled populations, but the antiquity of human interventions is still poorly understood due to a lack of earlier archaeological sites across the broad region, particularly pertaining to the mid-Holocene. Here we report on Amerindian occupations spanning the period from ca. 6000-3000 BP along the middle Berbice River, Guyana, including early evidence in Amazonia of cultural practices widely considered indicative of settled villages, notably terra preta or "black earth" soils, mound construction, and ceramic technology. These more settled occupations of the mid-Holocene initiated a trajectory of landscape domestication extending into historical times, including larger-scale late Holocene social formations. Collaborative research with local indigenous communities, including archaeological excavations, landscape mapping using kite based aerial photography, and three-dimensional photogrammetry, was designed to promote the decolonization of archaeological knowledge production and encourage indigenous ownership of Amerindian history and cultural heritage in Guyana.
In the Caribbean, there is little direct evidence of canoes in the archaeological record, while i... more In the Caribbean, there is little direct evidence of canoes in the archaeological record, while inter-island connectivity is ubiquitous in archaeological explanations. This contradiction suggests that aspects of society related to canoe manufacturing and voyaging have tended to be under-represented in our interpretations. This paper aims to contribute to correcting this under-representation and highlight the canoe as the foundation of precolonial infrastructure by examining the ecology of canoe-specific resources using habitat suitability modeling along with diverse lines of evidence from archaeological findings, ethnohistoric accounts, and experimental ethnoarchaeology. The synthesis of these diverse lines of evidence leads to a discussion of some implications that may follow from adopting a more canoe-centric perspective on the archaeological record.
Here we report on a ceramic assemblage excavated from the middle Berbice region of Guyana, and da... more Here we report on a ceramic assemblage excavated from the middle Berbice region of Guyana, and dated to the mid-Holocene. The results of a techno-functional ceramic attribute analysis, along with the contexts from which they were recovered are discussed in order to shed new light on the timing and location of early agricultural mound builders and ceramic innovations for this period of pre-colonial history in the Guianas. Furthermore, we argue that innovations in ceramic design originating in the middle Berbice account for a style of pottery known for it's coil applique , or fretwork design motifs, which has been identified at other sites in the region.
Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, 2017
This book is a project of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) http://sacc.a... more This book is a project of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) http://sacc.americananthro.org/ and our parent organization, the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Please refer to the website for a complete table of contents and more information about the book.
Proceedings of the 25th International Congress for Caribbean Archaeology, 2015
This paper presents preliminary results from archaeological investigations of Ceramic Age sites a... more This paper presents preliminary results from archaeological investigations of Ceramic Age sites along the east coast of Dominica. A three-tiered survey strategy was used to locate sites, including GIS-based predictive modeling, informant-based reconnaissance survey, and extensive sub-surface sampling. Investigations were focused in three watershed micro-regions, Hampstead, Castle Bruce, and Delices. In each micro-region, six or seven sites were identified and systematically tested, revealing trends in settlement patterns and community organization. The results help refute the dying notion that Dominica lacks a significant pre-Columbian archaeological record and add to the mounting evidence of sizeable populations during the Late Ceramic Age.
Laurel Cemetery was incorporated in 1852 as a nondenominational cemetery for African Americans of... more Laurel Cemetery was incorporated in 1852 as a nondenominational cemetery for African Americans of Baltimore, Maryland. It was the final resting place for thousands of Baltimoreans and many prominent members of the community, including religious leaders, educators, political organizers, and civil rights activists. During its existence, the privately owned cemetery changed hands several times, and by the 1930s, the site was overgrown, and garbage strewn from years of improper maintenance and neglect. In the 1950s, legislation was adopted permitting the demolition and sale of the property for commercial purposes. Despite controversy over the new legislation, local opposition to the demolition, numerous lawsuits, and NAACP supported court appeals, the cemetery was demolished in 1958 to make room for the development of a shopping center. Prior to the bulldozing of the cemetery, a few hundred gravestones and an unknown number of burials (fewer than 200) were exhumed and relocated to a new site in Carroll County. Ongoing archival research has thus far documented over 18,000 (projected to be over 40,000) original burials, most of which still remain interred beneath the Belair-Edison Crossing shopping center property, which occupies the footprint of the old cemetery.
This book highlights and historicizes underexplored and forgotten people and events associated with the cemetery, stressing the importance of their work in laying the social, economic, and political foundation for Baltimore’s African American community. Additionally, this text details the unsuccessful fight to prevent the cemetery’s destruction and the more recent grassroots formation of the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project to research and commemorate the site and the people buried there.
A short video I compiled of clips the crew and I recorded regularly throughout my year-long disse... more A short video I compiled of clips the crew and I recorded regularly throughout my year-long dissertation fieldwork in Dominica. In this video, recorded early in the project, all the members of the crew introduce themselves, and two vignettes, "The Mortar Controversy," and "Eagle Eyes," capture moments from our exploratory pedestrian survey.
A collection of interviews with canoe builders in Dominica filmed over a period of time between 2... more A collection of interviews with canoe builders in Dominica filmed over a period of time between 2012 and 2013. This was intended to accompany my 2020 article "Canoe societies in the Caribbean: Ethnography, archaeology, and ecology of precolonial canoe manufacturing and voyaging," published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Volume 57, March 2020, 101140, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101140
Harvesting clay for a collaborative educational activity Marcus Cuffy and I designed while doing ... more Harvesting clay for a collaborative educational activity Marcus Cuffy and I designed while doing my dissertation research in Dominica between 2012 and 2013. For these activities, we would visit primary schools around Dominica and give a 30-minute talk about archaeology and the island's pre-Colonial history, focusing on ancient technology. Then we would have an arts and crafts lesson in which Marcus and I would teach the students to make coil constructed pottery with local clays that we would later analyze through neutron activation analysis. We incorporated theory, history, heritage, practice and fun into one activity, and then took it to several schools around Dominica. This video contains footage from when Marcus and I were harvesting clay with a local potter who was showing where he collected clay. It also includes a montage of photographs taken during the activities at the various primary schools.
The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Apr 27, 2017
ABSTRACT Radiocarbon age estimates from a micro-regional survey of Eastern Dominica provide a chr... more ABSTRACT Radiocarbon age estimates from a micro-regional survey of Eastern Dominica provide a chronological framework for Ceramic Age (ca. 400 BC to AD 1492) settlements and population movements in relation to inter-island communities of the Windward Islands. This report covers the design of the survey, the recovery context of the radiocarbon samples, and the implications for the future of research involving Dominica. Although only a small number of radiocarbon age estimates are reported, these are among the first published from systematically excavated pre-Columbian contexts in Dominica.
Les matériaux lithiques dans le registre archéologique ont toujours été l'objet d'une att... more Les matériaux lithiques dans le registre archéologique ont toujours été l'objet d'une attention particulière de la part des archéologues, surtout dans les contextes préhistoriques. Ils suscitent une telle attention grâce à leur excellente préservation et au potentiel important qu’ils possèdent pour fournir des informations sur les comportements passés, y compris la mobilité des biens et des personnes grâce aux études de provenance. Bien qu'ils ne représentent pas la majorité du corpus archéologique dans les sites archéologiques précoloniaux des Petites Antilles, où la céramique et l’outillage sur coquille domine, leur diversité géologique nécessite de regrouper des connaissances, des méthodes et des compétences variées afin de les étudier. Ici, nous présentons les résultats préliminaires de spécialistes en caractérisation des roches volcaniques, silicites et roches vertes.Pour la première fois, plusieurs artefacts en verre volcanique ont été identifiés sur des sites du C...
A Place for Memory: Baltimore's Historic Laurel Cemetery, 2023
This chapter answers the crucial questions of why the cemetery was allowed to decline, how it was... more This chapter answers the crucial questions of why the cemetery was allowed to decline, how it was demolished in spite of legal challenges, and exactly who profited from the eventual re-zoning and redevelopment. Due to the laws in place at its initial incorporation in 1852, the Laurel Cemetery Company was not owned or incorporated by African Americans, although servicing the African American community. This characteristic of ownership remained unchanged up to and after the cemetery’s demolition. We reveal how the opposing interests of cemetery owners and lot owners manifested in the decline of the property and an eventual legal battle to halt demolition—a demolition that lot owners only learned of once bulldozers were witnessed on the property. The story of Laurel Cemetery’s demolition is a narrowly legal saga of collusion, conflict of interest, and self-dealing by individuals within the Baltimore City Solicitor’s office. This injustice brough great profit to a few at the immeasurable expense of many.
The nature and degree of human modifications of humid tropical forests in Amazonia have been wide... more The nature and degree of human modifications of humid tropical forests in Amazonia have been widely debated over the past two decades. Many regions provide significant evidence of late Holocene anthropogenic influence by settled populations, but the antiquity of human interventions is still poorly understood due to a lack of earlier archaeological sites across the broad region, particularly pertaining to the mid-Holocene. Here we report on Amerindian occupations spanning the period from ca. 6000-3000 BP along the middle Berbice River, Guyana, including early evidence in Amazonia of cultural practices widely considered indicative of settled villages, notably terra preta or "black earth" soils, mound construction, and ceramic technology. These more settled occupations of the mid-Holocene initiated a trajectory of landscape domestication extending into historical times, including larger-scale late Holocene social formations. Collaborative research with local indigenous communities, including archaeological excavations, landscape mapping using kite based aerial photography, and three-dimensional photogrammetry, was designed to promote the decolonization of archaeological knowledge production and encourage indigenous ownership of Amerindian history and cultural heritage in Guyana.
In the Caribbean, there is little direct evidence of canoes in the archaeological record, while i... more In the Caribbean, there is little direct evidence of canoes in the archaeological record, while inter-island connectivity is ubiquitous in archaeological explanations. This contradiction suggests that aspects of society related to canoe manufacturing and voyaging have tended to be under-represented in our interpretations. This paper aims to contribute to correcting this under-representation and highlight the canoe as the foundation of precolonial infrastructure by examining the ecology of canoe-specific resources using habitat suitability modeling along with diverse lines of evidence from archaeological findings, ethnohistoric accounts, and experimental ethnoarchaeology. The synthesis of these diverse lines of evidence leads to a discussion of some implications that may follow from adopting a more canoe-centric perspective on the archaeological record.
Here we report on a ceramic assemblage excavated from the middle Berbice region of Guyana, and da... more Here we report on a ceramic assemblage excavated from the middle Berbice region of Guyana, and dated to the mid-Holocene. The results of a techno-functional ceramic attribute analysis, along with the contexts from which they were recovered are discussed in order to shed new light on the timing and location of early agricultural mound builders and ceramic innovations for this period of pre-colonial history in the Guianas. Furthermore, we argue that innovations in ceramic design originating in the middle Berbice account for a style of pottery known for it's coil applique , or fretwork design motifs, which has been identified at other sites in the region.
Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, 2017
This book is a project of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) http://sacc.a... more This book is a project of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) http://sacc.americananthro.org/ and our parent organization, the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Please refer to the website for a complete table of contents and more information about the book.
Proceedings of the 25th International Congress for Caribbean Archaeology, 2015
This paper presents preliminary results from archaeological investigations of Ceramic Age sites a... more This paper presents preliminary results from archaeological investigations of Ceramic Age sites along the east coast of Dominica. A three-tiered survey strategy was used to locate sites, including GIS-based predictive modeling, informant-based reconnaissance survey, and extensive sub-surface sampling. Investigations were focused in three watershed micro-regions, Hampstead, Castle Bruce, and Delices. In each micro-region, six or seven sites were identified and systematically tested, revealing trends in settlement patterns and community organization. The results help refute the dying notion that Dominica lacks a significant pre-Columbian archaeological record and add to the mounting evidence of sizeable populations during the Late Ceramic Age.
Laurel Cemetery was incorporated in 1852 as a nondenominational cemetery for African Americans of... more Laurel Cemetery was incorporated in 1852 as a nondenominational cemetery for African Americans of Baltimore, Maryland. It was the final resting place for thousands of Baltimoreans and many prominent members of the community, including religious leaders, educators, political organizers, and civil rights activists. During its existence, the privately owned cemetery changed hands several times, and by the 1930s, the site was overgrown, and garbage strewn from years of improper maintenance and neglect. In the 1950s, legislation was adopted permitting the demolition and sale of the property for commercial purposes. Despite controversy over the new legislation, local opposition to the demolition, numerous lawsuits, and NAACP supported court appeals, the cemetery was demolished in 1958 to make room for the development of a shopping center. Prior to the bulldozing of the cemetery, a few hundred gravestones and an unknown number of burials (fewer than 200) were exhumed and relocated to a new site in Carroll County. Ongoing archival research has thus far documented over 18,000 (projected to be over 40,000) original burials, most of which still remain interred beneath the Belair-Edison Crossing shopping center property, which occupies the footprint of the old cemetery.
This book highlights and historicizes underexplored and forgotten people and events associated with the cemetery, stressing the importance of their work in laying the social, economic, and political foundation for Baltimore’s African American community. Additionally, this text details the unsuccessful fight to prevent the cemetery’s destruction and the more recent grassroots formation of the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project to research and commemorate the site and the people buried there.
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This book highlights and historicizes underexplored and forgotten people and events associated with the cemetery, stressing the importance of their work in laying the social, economic, and political foundation for Baltimore’s African American community. Additionally, this text details the unsuccessful fight to prevent the cemetery’s destruction and the more recent grassroots formation of the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project to research and commemorate the site and the people buried there.
This book highlights and historicizes underexplored and forgotten people and events associated with the cemetery, stressing the importance of their work in laying the social, economic, and political foundation for Baltimore’s African American community. Additionally, this text details the unsuccessful fight to prevent the cemetery’s destruction and the more recent grassroots formation of the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project to research and commemorate the site and the people buried there.