Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University
Biography
Kurt A. Jordan is Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University, where he currently directs the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP) and is a former director of the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS). His research centers on the archaeology and history of Haudenosaunee peoples in the Finger Lakes region, emphasizing Onöndowa´ga:´ (Seneca) settlement patterns, housing, and economies during the 17th and 18th centuries and the long-term indigenous occupation around Cayuga Lake.
Jordan has conducted two major excavations projects, the first at the circa 1715-1754 Onöndowa´ga:´ Townley-Read site, where fieldwork took place from 1996-2000. This project was developed with input from Onöndowa´ga:´ community members, and a more fully collaborative project was designed for 2007-2015 fieldwork at the circa 1688-1715 Onöndowa´ga:´ White Springs site. The Townley-Read project is laid out in Jordan’s first book, The Seneca Restoration, 1715-1754: An Iroquois Local Political Economy (University Press of Florida, 2008). A multi-vocal, co-authored book is planned on the White Springs Project. Artifacts from both of these excavations will be repatriated to the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum when study is complete.
Jordan has worked with Gayogohó:no´(Cayuga) partners since 2017, on place names, collaborative exhibits, and sharing historical and archaeological knowledge. Recently, Jordan has concentrated on providing public lectures and writing accessible accounts of Cayuga-Lake region Gayogohó:no´ history and archaeology to address the present lack of up-to-date public resources on Indigenous history. One example is a co-authored chapter on Indigenous history in the book Smith Woods: The Environmental History of an Old Growth Forest Remnant in Central New York State (Paleontological Research Institution Special Publication No. 52, 2017). A second edition of this book is in the works.
He has worked with GRASAC since 2016. GRASAC seed funding was instrumental to initiating the multivocal digital image collection and website Onöndowa’ga:’ (Seneca) Haudenosaunee Archaeological Materials, circa 1688-1754, a partnership between Jordan, Cornell Anthropology Ph.D. student Dusti Bridges, the Cornell Library system, and Indigenous partners from the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum and the Seneca Art and Culture Center at Ganondagan.
At AIISP, Jordan initiated the Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project in 2020 to examine the history and present-day implications of Cornell’s territorial activities, including its entanglement with the lands of Indigenous Nations in what are now fifteen U.S. states through the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862.