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Dr. Penelope B. Drooker

Curator of Anthropology Emerita

B. A., Geology, 1965, Wellesley College

M.S., Hydrology, 1968, University of New Hampshire

A.L.M., Anthropology, 1989, Harvard University

Ph.D., Anthropology, 1996, The University at Albany, State University of New York

My archaeological research centers on two areas: the Contact Period in eastern North America (ca. 1500-1750), and perishable material culture, particularly archaeological textiles.

The Contact Period, during which Europeans began to explore the Western Hemisphere and they and Native Americans initially encountered each other, was an era of rapid change, even far inland from where face-to-face confrontations and accommodations were taking place. I am particularly interested in tracing changes and continuities in inter-regional interaction patterns through the movements of European trade goods and indigenous objects of value such as engraved marine shell gorgets and redstone pipes, and assessing the accompanying changes and continuities in Native lifeways during this turbulent period.

As much as 95 percent of Native American material culture – houses, clothing, containers, hunting and fishing implements – was fashioned from organic materials such as wood, bark, plant fiber, leather, fur, and feathers, yet only a small fraction of this survives in the archaeological record. Much of my research in this area is dedicated to searching out and analyzing new sources of evidence, such as textile impressions on pottery, that can be used to deduce the significance of perishable crafts in the economies and “social fabric” of past peoples.

Publications

2021
Drooker, P.B., 2021. Sources and Significance of Pipestone Artifacts from Fort Ancient Sites. Midcontinenetal Journal of Archaeology 46, 17–52.
2017
Drooker, P.B., 2017. The Fabric of Power: Textiles in Mississippian Politics and Ritual, in: Waselkov, G.A., Smith, M.T. (Eds.), Forging Southeastern Identities: Social Archaeology, Ethnohistory, And Folklore Of The Mississippian To Early Historic South. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, pp. 16-40.
Drooker, P.B., 2017. Fabric Fragments from Pine Island, Alabama: Indicator of an Evolving Male Costume Item. Southeastern Archaeology 36, 75 - 84. doi:10.1080/0734578X.2016.1247633
2012
2011
Steponaitis, V.P., Swanson, S.E., Wheeler, G., Drooker, P.B., 2011. The Provenance and Use of Etowah Palettes. American Antiquity 76, 81-106. doi:10.7183/0002-7316.76.1.81
2010
Drooker, P.B., Hart, J.P. (Eds.), 2010. Soldiers, Cities, and Landscapes: Papers in Honor of Charles L. Fisher, New York State Museum Bulletin. The University of the State of New York, Albany, New York.
Pickands, M., 2010. A Local Industry Reflects a Local Community--The Watts Blacksmith Shop, in: Drooker, P.B., Hart, J.P. (Eds.), Soldiers, Cities, And Landscapes: Papers In Honor Of Charles L. Fisher. The University of the State of New York, Albany, New York, pp. 281-293.
Bradley, J.A., Younge, M.H., Kozlowski, A.L., 2010. The Sundler Sites: Reconstructing the Late Pleistocene Landscape and its People in the Capital Region of New York, in: Drooker, P.B., Hart, J.P. (Eds.), Soldiers, Cities, And Landscapes: Papers In Honor Of Charles L. Fisher. The University of the State of New York, Albany, New York, pp. 213-224.
Orser, C.E., 2010. Foreword, in: Drooker, P.B., Hart, J.P. (Eds.), Soldiers, Cities, And Landscapes: Papers In Honor Of Charles L. Fisher. The University of the State of New York, Albany, New York, p. xiii-xiv.