Interview with Dr. Meg Kassabaum

Dr. Meg Kassabaum is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Weingarten Assistant Curator for North America at the Penn Museum. She earned her BA from Beloit College and her PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

What area do you work in/what is your field of study? I work in pre-contact Native American archaeology in the eastern United States. My work focuses primarily on moundbuilding populations of the Mississippi River Valley. I run excavation projects in both Mississippi and Illinois. I mostly focus on studying ceramics, food remains (plants and animals), and the mounds themselves and I am particularly interested in understanding the complex relationships between monumental architecture, communal ritual, food, and identity and social relationships between and among past people. In addition to being a professor in the Anthropology department at the University of Pennsylvania, I am also a curator in the American Section of the Penn Museum, so I also spend a lot of my time teaching archaeology and anthropology to students and the public and working with the Native American collections in the Museum. This position has helped me develop a major interest in public and museum archaeology as well.

What do you like most/what is most interesting about your job? I really love the balance in my job. I get to divide my time between four major tasks: 1) teaching and working with students, 2) working with collections and exhibits in the Museum, 3) engaging with the public and teaching them about pre-contact Native cultures, and 4) being in the field and lab doing my own research. I think I would probably get tired of any of these tasks if I had to do them all of the time, but the balance between them is perfect for me and there are parts of each of those tasks that I truly love.

What kinds of jobs are there in this field (for example, where or who can you work for)? I personally have held a variety of jobs related to archaeology including college professor, Museum curator, and contract archaeologist. That said, there are many more options as well… for example, you could work for the government (e.g., State Archaeologist or National Park Service archaeologist), or for nonprofits (e.g., the Archaeological Conservancy or the Institute for Field Research). 

How do you think archaeology/anthropology/paleontology is being brought into the modern age? I think the way forward for archaeology is definitely through collaborating with a wider variety of stakeholders. In my opinion, the most innovative projects that reflect modern thinking are those that integrate indigenous perspectives and/or involve the wider public in the entirety of the research process… from designing the guiding questions through conducting the excavation and analysis through interpreting and presenting the results.

As a woman, what challenges have you faced in this field? I feel as though I have been very lucky, in the sense that I have had strong mentors and good relationships throughout my time in the field. I know that many women have not been this lucky and have faced discrimination and harassment, but I have been lucky to avoid much of this. That said, there have been times where I have struggled to get respect from some male colleagues or when they have spoken over me or dismissed my opinions, but this hasn’t been terribly common; like I said, I’ve been lucky. I think that maybe the hardest gender-related issue for me to handle is that I often get asked to do a lot more service work than my male colleagues (i.e., work that technically falls outside of my job description and is often not compensated… like mentoring students through hard times, serving on lots of department and University committees, being an officer in my professional organization, etc.).

How did you first get started in this field and/or what were some of the most important steps or influences on your journey to becoming a scientist in this field? I grew up near Cahokia Mounds, a major pre-contact Native American site in Illinois, so I was always interested in archaeology. My dad was also interested in these topics while I was young and helped me to become interested. I did a field school at the Center for American Archeology while I was in highschool and this showed me that I would truly be happy doing this as a career. Then, I went to Beloit College where I had a really wonderful advisor who showed me the intricacies of the field and also showed me just how fun it could be. I was totally in love with the field by the time I graduated and went straight on to graduate school at the University of North Carolina to get my PhD. That’s really where I found the specific topics that most interested me and where I fell in love with the more traditional academic side of the discipline.

Do you think that as we advance in time, we are running out of archaeological ‘discoveries’ (for lack of a better word)? Or, how do you see the future of this field of science playing out? Absolutely not! There is so much left to learn and so many new topics to think through. As I mentioned before, I think that by collaborating with a wider variety of people, we can always come up with new questions, new ways to answer old questions, or new ways to interpret data that already exists. 

Is it difficult to learn how to find artifacts or dig for them? Archaeology is an apprenticeship discipline, which means you have to learn by doing. So, if you are able to get out into the field and get hands-on experience, I don’t actually believe that it is too hard to learn how to excavate… but it is not possible to learn how to do it in a classroom. It’s also physically difficult… but that is actually one of my favorite things about it.

What is the coolest thing/artifact you’ve ever found/worked with? This is a super hard question! I have a few answers. In terms of artifacts, I think the coolest thing I have ever found was an earspool. You can learn more about it, and earspools in general, here: vimeo.com/398989808. That said, I don’t think it’s always artifacts that are the most interesting things we find. While doing my dissertation research, I found a burial of a bear that sent me down some really interesting paths in my research. Of course the bones and artifacts in the burial were interesting, but the various features that were associated with it on the site were much more interesting. You can read more about if here: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/Penn-UNC-researchers-analyze-ancient-bear-bones-Mississippi-dig-site.

My Reflection:

First of all, I really just enjoyed reading all of Dr. Kassabaum’s responses! They were clearly well thought out, and I learned a lot. I am really interested in her field of study, pre-contact Native American archaeology. I think it is such an interesting area which is sometimes overlooked. I really liked what she talked about with splitting her time up, as I too feel like I would probably get bored just doing one thing, and I would definitely be interested in managing my time and work in a similar way. I’m really glad she wrote about the variety of jobs in this field; for me personally, I don’t see myself being really passionate about teaching, so I’m glad there are other options. I also found what Dr. Kassabaum talked about with including a wider range of stakeholders to be super interesting, and I completely agree that bringing in more of that indigenous perspective will be very valuable to the field as a whole. Finally, I really enjoyed watching Dr. Kassabaum’s video on earspools and reading about the bear burials. It’s so interesting to me how even uncovering animal remains can lead us to learn so much about the past! I am so thankful that Dr. Kassabaum was able to answer my questions and provide me with more insight into the life of an archaeologist!