Chris Shephard
Email:: [[cjshephard]]Year entered:: 2009
Degree sought;: PhD
Research interests:: colonialism, landscape, memory, ethnohistory, indigenous archaeology
Regional specialization:: Tidewater / Eastern Shore Virginia
Background
Christopher received his BA in History and English from Virginia Tech in 2002 and subsequently worked in cultural resource management for five years before returning to school. Receiving his MA from William and Mary in 2009, Chris returned to the program in the same year to pursue his PhD. Christopher's MA thesis, "Places of Power: The Community and Regional Development of Native Tidewater Palisades Post A.D. 1200," considers the Native pre-contact tradition of palisade construction, the varying uses of such structures, and their connections to conceptions of space, power, and authority within the Late Woodland and early colonial periods in Tidewater, Virginia. For his dissertation research, Chris is interested in the ways in which Native communities on the Eastern Shore of Virginia have navigated the social, economic, and political challenges that stemmed from the spread of capitalism from the 17th century through the present.
Publications and Presentations:
Shephard, Christopher
2009 A Late Woodland Protohistoric Compound on the Chickahominy River: Multiscalar Investigations of the Buck Farm Site. Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology (25).
Presenting a paper entitled, Familiar Responses to Familiar Circumstances: Nansemond Indians in the Colonial Context in Tidewater, Virginia at the 2010 American Society for Ethnohistory Conference, Ottowa Canada
Coauthor (with Alexandra Martin) of a paper entitled, Strategic Native Responses to Colonial Landscapes: A Comparative Review to be presented at the 2010 Eastern States Archaeological Federation/ Archaeological Society of Virginia Conference
Co-Chair of Session: The Historical Archaeology of Native Americans in Virginia: A.D. 200-2011 at the 2011 Society for Historical Archaeology Conference, Austin, Texas
Presenting a paper entitled, The Archaeology of Reservated Communities: Revising Historical and Cultural Narratives
Research Interests
Chris’ interests include identity formation, socio-political change, settlement patterning and culture contact in the Middle Woodland through Contact period Chesapeake.