Nathan Acebo

Assistant Professor, PhD. Stanford University 2020

Nathan Acebo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Indigenous and Native American Studies (NAIS) at the University of Connecticut. He practices CBPR-based Indigenous Archaeology and his work thematically explores how Indigenous epistemologies can inform New Materialist approaches to subaltern resistance, communal autonomy and affective potentiality in the pre- and post-colonial contexts of Alta California and the plantation era in Hawaii. Dr. Acebo explores these topics through field and museum-based collection analysis using different methodologies inclusive of lithic and ceramic analyses, geochemical archaeometry techniques, digital ethnography, and qualitative approaches to GIS mapping. Dr. Acebo’s research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Society for California Archaeology, and various research institutes at Stanford University. He also held the University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow (President Post-Doc Program) and Critical Mission Studies Fellowship at the UC Merced and UC San Diego from 2020-2021.

Dr. Acebo is currently working on a manuscript titled, An Archaeology of Indigenous Autonomy. This book draws attention to macro-political expressions of Indigenous governance and economic prosperity in the southern California colonial hinterlands during the Spanish and Mexican-Californio eras of colonization, and how Tongva, Acjachemen, and Payómkawichum peoples performed radically subversive forms of survivance in the past and present. Lastly, Dr. Acebo is continuing to build his second project on the Laie Sugar Plantation, which examines how Native Hawaiian and Filipinx laborers constructed alternative multiethnic communities under Mormon proselytization and plantation labor coercion in early 20th century Oahu, Hawaii.

Area Focus:

North America (primarily the west coast, Great Basin and Southwest Regions) and Hawaii

Teaching:

ANTH5395: Indigenous & Collaboration-Based Archaeologies
ANTH1006: Introduction to Anthropology
ANTH3098: The Archaeology of Resistance

Websites:

https://uconn.academia.edu/NathanAcebo
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nathan-Acebo