Dept. of Anthropology
Climate Change Institute
University of Maine
South Stevens Hall
Orono, ME 04469-5790
207-581-2174 Ph/Voicemail
Brian.Robinson at umit.maine.edu
I am an archaeologist specializing in northern and coastal hunter-gatherers, the culture history of Northeastern North America, cultural and natural boundary conditions, mortuary ritual and Anthropological theory. There are strongly defined environmental regions and boundaries within the Gulf of Maine, with equally strong contrasts between cultural traditions. In other words, there are multiple ancient cultural traditions in the broad neighborhood that interacted in different ways at different times. Understanding different groups and boundaries is a multidisciplinary pursuit, integrating environment, subsistence, technology, settlement pattern, cultural landscape, ritual symbolism and historical sources. With high visibility archaeological patterns and environmental contrasts, the ancient traditions of the Northeast may serve as both the cultural heritage of modern Wabanaki people on the Maritime Peninsula of Maine and Canada, and important case studies of hunter-gatherer organization.
My dissertation was on groups and boundaries in the Gulf of Maine between 9000 to 4000 years ago, based on a reanalysis of the Moorehead burial tradition. The research involved archival sources, collections research, extensive interviews with excavators of little known sites, and a dissertation NSF grant dedicated to AMS radiocarbon dating. Concurrently, I worked with Dr. Frederick West on the analysis of Pleistocene and Early Holocene lithic assemblages from central Alaska. At present I have an NSF grant to document and evaluate the ring-shaped settlement pattern of the Bull Brook Paleoindian site in Ipswich, Massachusetts, which is composed of 40 activity areas or house sites. The project involves the original excavators of the site, the Peabody Essex Museum, and geologists, archaeologists and students from the University of Maine and other institutions. The site may represent one of the largest structured settlement plans in Pleistocene North America.
I have excavated in a wide variety of conditions including deeply stratified fluvial deposits, shell middens, and saturated freshwater and marine sites with organic preservation. Interests in material analysis include lithic and bone technology, faunal analysis (particularly fish) and organic preservation in wet sites.
The Nelson Island and Seabrook Marsh Sites: Late Archaic, Marine-Oriented People on the Central New England Coast. 1985. Occasional Publications in Northeastern Anthropology, Vol. 9, pp. 1-104.
Early and Middle Archaic Period Occupation in the Gulf of Maine Region: Mortuary and Technological Patterning. 1992. In Early Holocene Occupation in Northern New England, edited by Brian Robinson, James Petersen and Ann Robinson, Occasional Publications in Maine Archaeology 9:63-117. Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Augusta.
A Regional Analysis of the Moorehead Burial Tradition: 8500-3700 B.P. Archaeology of Eastern North America 24:95-148. 1996.
Archaic Period Burial Patterning in Northeastern North America. In Contributions to the Archaeology of Northeastern North America, edited by Brian S. Robinson, Special Issue of Review of Archaeology, 17(1):33-44. 1996.
(by Frederick H.West, Brian S. Robinson and Constance West) Whitmore Ridge. In American Beginnings, edited by Frederick H. West, pp. 386-394, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1996.
Population Fluctuation, Climatic Events, and Culture History in the Northeast: Review of Fiedel. In The Review of Archaeology 24(1):56-61. 2003.
Multiple Boundaries of the Moorehead Burial Tradition. Northeast Anthropology. 66:15-28. 2003.