Promoting Academic Excellence and Social Responsibility
About The Society of Black Archaeologists
Our History
The Society of Black Archaeologists was created in 2011 with five goals in mind:
- To lobby on behalf and ensure the proper treatment of African and African Diaspora material culture
- To encourage more people of African descent to enter the field of archaeology
- To raise and address concerns related to African peoples worldwide
- To highlight the past and present achievements and contributions that people of African descent have made to the field of archaeology
- To ensure the communities affected by archaeological work act not just as objects of study or informants but are active makers and/or participants in the unearthing of their own history
Our Mission
The Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) centers the histories and material cultures of global Black and African communities in archaeological research. By providing a strong network, mentorship, and educational access, the SBA works to resolve the ongoing systemic exclusion of Black and African scholars and communities from the field of archaeology. The SBA aims to provide avenues of engagement and training that will prepare Black and African scholars and communities to be active participants in the documentation, excavation, preservation, and interpretation of Black and African heritage.
Our Vision
The vision of the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) is to create a strong network of archaeologists that advocates to ensure the proper treatment of African and African diaspora material culture, promotes more people of African descent to enter the field of archaeology, ensures community collaborations, raises and addresses concerns related to African peoples worldwide, and highlights the past and present achievements and contributions people of African descent have made to the field of archaeology.
The Society of Black Archaeologists
Leadership
PRESIDENT
Alexandra Jones, PhD
Dr. Jones earned a PhD in Historical Archaeology from the University of California Berkeley in 2010. Her research focuses on African diaspora archaeology, community archaeology, and archaeology outreach. She has been an archaeology educator for more than 16 years focused on making archaeological knowledge accessible to all. Dr. Jones serves as the President for the Society of Black Archaeologists, the current President of the St. Croix Archaeological Society and she serves as the Chair for the US Cultural Property Advisory Committee for the United States appointed by President Biden.
PRESIDENT-ELECT
Alicia Odewale, PhD
Dr. Odewale earned her PhD from the University of Tulsa in 2016; becoming the first person of African descent to receive a doctorate in anthropology from TU and the first Black faculty member to join TU’s Department of Anthropology. As a professor of practice in the African American Studies department at the University of Houston and National Geographic Explorer, her work as an archaeologist, educator, and advocate centers around African Diaspora archaeology in the Caribbean and southeastern United States with a community-centered, restorative justice, anti-racist and Black feminist archaeology theoretical approach. She serves on the board of the Society for Historical Archaeology and the Nat Geo Oklahoma Advisory Council, President- Elect for the Society of Black Archaeologists, and leader of the non-profit organization, The Greenwood Diaspora Project.
TREASURER
Craig Stevens
Craig Stevens is an archeologist and curator. His work seeks to express anthropological and archaeological data through creative processes and immersive products. Through the use of 3D digitization and innovative curatorial strategies, Craig seeks to expose broad and diverse audiences to African and African Diasporic material culture. He is completing his doctoral research in the Anthropology Department at Northwestern University.
Secretary
Madison Aubey
Madison Aubey is an archaeologist and PhD candidate at UCLA. Focusing primarily on household and Black feminist methods, Madison works to better understand how Black Americans worked to establish cultural identity and community structures in the wake of Slavery. Her work engages with notions of Habitus, diaspora studies, sovereignty studies and consumer practices. She has done fieldwork in Kalamata, Greece; Saclo, Benin; Fort Mosé in Florida; and Africatown, Alabama.
Student representative
MyKayla Williamson, MA, RPA
MyKayla Williamson is a Registered Professional Archaeologist whose work focuses on the experiences of the Black Atlantic. A current PhD student, her research conceptualizes the emergence of plantation societies in the United States both within and beyond the boundaries of the American South. With a focus on the minutiae of household-level analysis, Williamson has excavated in Florida, the Virgin Islands, and New York. She is the Principal Investigator for two sites in Mississippi, where she centers community-engaged methods.
Chairman of the Board
Ayana Omilade Flewellen, PhD
Ayana Omilade Flewellen (they/she) is a Black Feminist, an archaeologist, a storyteller, and an artist. As a scholar of anthropology and African and African Diaspora Studies, Flewellen’s intellectual genealogy is shaped by critical theory rooted in Black feminist epistemology and pedagogy. This epistemological backdrop not only constructs the way she designs, conducts and produces her scholarship but acts as foundational to how she advocates for greater diversity within the field of archaeology and within the broader scope of academia. Flewellen is the co-founder and current President-Elect of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of Diving With A Purpose. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her research and teaching interests address Black Feminist Theory, historical archaeology, maritime heritage conservation, public and community-engaged archaeology, processes of identity formations, and representations of slavery. Flewellen has been featured in National Geographic, Science Magazine and PBS; and regularly presents her work at institutions including The National Museum for Women in the Arts.
board member
Peggy Brunache, PhD
board member
Tiffany C. Fryer, PhD
Dr. Fryer is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, and an assistant curator in their Museum of Anthropological Archaeology where she curates their global historical archaeology and ethnology collections. Working in partnership with descendant communities is at the center of her practice. She co-founded and serves as associate director of the U-M Center for Community Archaeology & Heritage. Dr. Fryer is committed to making archaeology a more inclusive and accessible discipline. To that end, she teaches and writes on colonialism, race, and political violence; research methods, praxis, and politics in historical archaeology and anthropology; and museums, cultural heritage, and collective memory. She also sits on the Board of the Institute for Field Research. After finishing her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, she held a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Society of Fellows for the Liberal Arts at Princeton University.
board member
Jay Haigler
Jay V. Haigler is an American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS) scientific diving instructor, a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Master Scuba Diver Trainer, and Scuba Diving International (SDI) Open Water Instructor. Jay has over a dozen specialty instructor ratings including archaeology survey diver, coral reef conservation, and heritage awareness diving. A graduate of the Catholic University of America, with a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering, Jay loves the technical aspects of underwater archaeology. Jay received his initial open water scuba certification from renowned International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame inductee, Dr. Albert José Jones. Mr. Haigler is a current board member with AAUS and the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology. He is a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Sanctuary Advisory Committee for the Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary located in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Mr. Haigler is a founding board member of Diving With a Purpose. Diving With a Purpose (DWP) is a leading international non-profit organization that provides education and training programs, mission leadership, and project support services for submerged heritage preservation and conservation projects worldwide with a focus on the African Diaspora. Mr. Haigler is the author of numerous publications, speeches, and symposia presentations. He has been a contributing author with NOAA’s signature publication, The Earth Is Blue Magazine. He has published in academic journals such as, Advances in Archaeological Practices. Mr. Haigler along with Dr. Albert José Jones have lectured at Harvard University’s Museums of Science & Culture. and the History of Diving Museum.
board member
G. Omoni Hartemann
G. Omoni Hartemann is an ancestral storyteller from Black Amazonia whose work manifests through Archaeology, Anthropology, and Translation. Hartemann is Afro Guianese, a descendant of the founders of the village of Mana, in Guiana, and Ọmọ Òrìs̩à at Ilê Axé Iyaba Omi, in Belém do Pará, Brazil. Hartemann holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Montréal (2014), a master’s degree (2019), and a doctorate (2025) in Anthropology with a specialization in Archaeology from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. They sit on the Board of Directors of the Society of Black Archaeologists. Their work is influenced by Indigenous and Black archaeologies and has its roots in ancestral African and Afro-diasporic ontologies to re-imagine and re-understand archaeology as a mode of knowledge that frees itself from colonial projects. Their current research, entitled Pitit’Latè, is a collaborative project rooted in Black archaeology, with the aim of remembering, locating, and showing the connections between the material and immaterial histories of Black Amazonian communities in Guiana.
board member
William White, PhD
Dr. William White is a professor at the University of California Berkley. He finished his Bachelor of Arts in anthropology at Boise State University in 2001 and his Masters at the University of Idaho in 2005. Upon completing his Masters, Bill entered a career in the cultural resource management industry. Dr. White has been active in using digital media to create and disseminate archaeology-related content. He has built several websites, YouTube channels, and GoogleEarth digital tours. For over five years, Bill has been an active blogger, podcaster, and eBook publisher and connects with thousands of other archaeologists and students via the internet each month. He worked for the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) where he specialized in historical artifact analysis, building documentation, ethnography, and archeological fieldwork. His dissertation research project was conducted in his hometown of Boise, Idaho where he focused on using community based participatory research to investigate the past of a multi-racial neighborhood. His current work centers around a public archaeology project with African American descendant communities on St. Croix in the United States Virgin Islands