Hadley Kruczek-Aaron (or "Dr. K-A," as her students call her) is an archaeologist whose research examines the ways that class, gender, race, and religion have been lived in 19th-century America. She explored these topics in Everyday Religion: An Archaeology of Protestant Belief and Practice in the Nineteenth-Century (University Press of Florida, 2015), which focused on archaeology carried out at sites associated with central New York abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Since then, she has continued to explore similar questions at sites across northern New York, including those associated with Civil War soldiers, loggers, reformers, tourists, and farmers (especially those associated with Timbuctoo, a 19th-c. community of African Americans in the Adirondacks). Committed to collaborative approaches to archaeology, she has partnered with public institutions, private landowners, descendants, non-profits, and other educators to carry out research and develop curriculum and public programs relating to her work. Hadley, who earned her Ph.D. from Syracuse University, has been a professor at SUNY Potsdam since 2005.
Regarding teaching and advising, Dr. K-A came to Potsdam in part because it is a small, teaching-centered college where she can work closely with undergraduates eager to explore their interests in archaeology and anthropology through transformative learning experiences that prepare them for their post-Potsdam worlds. Her teaching philosophy centers on the following core principles: 1.0 that learning happens best in welcoming classrooms where students feel cared for and respected; 2.) that learning is enhanced by doing instead of passive listening; and 3.) that students are challenged and inspired by original research projects that have them engaging with their communities. As a mentor and advisor, she sees her role as encouraging students toward new experiences that give them direction and spark excitement while also guiding them to acquire practical skills that provide them more options when they graduate.
Courses currently taught:
ANTH 111 Intro to Anthropology
ANTH 204 Archaeology
ANTH 315 Field Archaeology
ANTH 316 Archaeological Lab Techniques
ANTH 359 Archaeology of Black Lives
ANTH 362 Historical Archaeology
ANTH 410 Advanced Archaeological Research
ANTH 417 Archaeological Procedures (lecture and lab)
For press and other media about Dr. K-A's work, see:
https://www.potsdam.edu/academics/AAS/depts/Anth/Timbuctoo
https://wamcpodcasts.org/podcast/discovering-timbuctoo-a-new-york-minute-in-history/
Selected publications:
2023 Final Report for Phase III Testing at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site (21PR04354), North Elba, New York. Submitted to the New York State Parks and Historic Preservation Office, Peebles Island, NY.
2015 Everyday Religion: An Archaeology of Protestant Belief and Practice in the Nineteenth Century. Society for Historical Archaeology and University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
2015 Race and Remembering in the Adirondacks: Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present. In Race in the Northeast: Archaeological Studies of Racialization, Resistance, and Memory, edited by C. Matthews and A. Manfra McGovern, pp. 134-149. Society for Historical Archaeology and University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
2014 Making Change Materialize: An Archaeology of Social Reform in the Age of Obama.
International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 18(2): 299-315.