Back to top

Photograph of Daniel Sayers

Daniel Sayers Associate Professor CAS | ANTH | Anthropology

Additional Positions at AU
Graduate Director, Anthropology
Degrees
PhD, Historical Archaeology, College of William & Mary
MA, Anthropology, Western Michigan University
BA, Philosophy and Anthropology, Western Michigan University

Book Currently Reading
Goldfarb, 2023 Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of our Planet
Bio
Dr. Sayers has some 30 years of field- and U.S.-based experience in archaeology and anthropology that he brings to students in the classroom and in his mentoring. He has worked with many undergraduate and graduate students in helping them gain practical know-how in the profession and related areas, such as filmmaking, historiography, and museum studies. He works to help students understand the ways of anthropological thinking as well as the deep traditions of theory and practice in the profession. Dr. Sayers welcomes working with students with interests in all areas of anthropology, including archaeology, biocultural, linguistic and ethnographic anthropology as well as those in other disciplines outside of Anthropology proper. His interests, research efforts and modes of anthropological engagement with the world are many and varied as you can read about below.
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

Fall 2024

  • ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology

  • ANTH-496 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Spatial Anthropology

Spring 2025

  • ANTH-253 Introduction to Archaeology

Partnerships & Affiliations

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Research Interests

Exploring the following through a political economic perspective indebted to Marx and Sartre:

  • Diasporas and exile
  • Alienation, estrangement, and the material world
  • Labor, class, and commodities
  • Marronage, Maroon communities, and the (so-called) Underground Railroad
  • Farmsteads and rural cultures
  • Defiance and resistance among the oppressed
  • Community power
  • Multispecies power and inequalities (via Critical Animal Studies, Animal Liberation and Rights)
  • Gender, family, and kin, especially in rural contexts
  • Homed and unhomed (a.k.a., homeless, unhoused)
  • Race, racism, and racialization
  • Landscapes, esp. edges, margins, and surreptitious spaces/places

Media Appearances

July 2023

Appeared as a collaborative team member in, “Searching for a Fortress Built by People Who Escaped Slavery”, by Matthew Hutson, The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/searching-for-a-fortress-built-by-people-who-escaped-slavery

May 2023

Participated in the podcast, Tribal Truths, episode, “Nansemond Indian Nation: Looking for Ancestors in the Great Dismal Swamp”, WVTF, Virginia Public Radio.

https://www.wvtf.org/podcast/tribal-truths/2023-05-25/nansemond-indian-nation-looking-for-ancestors-in-the-great-dismal-swamp

August 2022

American Landscapes w/ host Baratunde Thurston, PBS, Episode 4 on the Mid-Atlantic; appeared as archaeology expert and interviewee with host in the Dismal Swamp.

February 2022

The Underground Railroad, episode 3 in 4-part series on Discovery Science Channel; appeared as archaeology expert in Dismal Swamp segment.

Grants and Sponsored Research

NEH "We the People Collaborative Grant; Canon/National Park Service/American Academy of Arts and Sciences Grant        

Films/Documentaries

Escape to the Great Dismal Swamp, Smithsonian Channel, 2018.

Selected Publications

Public Works

Sayers, Dan. 2021, The Secret Society of the Great Dismal Swamp. TedEd short film.

Sayers, Daniel O. 2018, A Modest Firearms Proposal, The Doctor T.J Eckleburg Review.

Sayers, Daniel O., 2017, Guest Columnist, "The Shepard House Has Alot to Teach Us."

Books

*Sayers, Daniel O. (2023). The Archaeology of the Homed and the Unhomed. Archaeology of the American Experience, Michael S. Nassaney and Krysta Ryzewski, series eds., University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

     * 2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award (American Library Association)

Sayers, Daniel O. (2014). A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. (Second, paperback edition, 2016).

Some Articles and Book Chapters

Sayers, Daniel O. (2025). Un-Silencing Historical Maroon Societies in the United States. Reviews in American History, Volume 53 (1): 7-32

Sayers, Daniel O. (2023). Some Thoughts on Landscape’s Political-Economic Fissures and Understanding Past Social Radicals. Thematic volume on “Cracks in Capitalism.”, Wurst and Dezsi, eds. International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

Sayers, Daniel O. (2019). The Radical Antebellum Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia, USA: Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and the Power of Underdeveloped Landscapes. Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle 58:125-146.

Sayers, Daniel O., and Justin Uehlein (2018). Animal Emancipation and Historical Archaeology: A Pairing Long Overdue. In, Critical Animal Studies: Towards Trans-species Social Justice, Atsuko Matsuoka and John Sorenson, eds., pp.117-142, Rowman & Littlefield International, London, UK.

Short Fiction

Daniel Owen Sayers, 2018, The Omphalos of Pritchard McCovey, Poor Yorick Journal