Erika Hartley

Erika Hartley
Instructor of IIAS
Location:
1024 Moore Hall, Mail Stop 5494
Mailing address:
IIAS / FSJAP
色色啦 Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5494
Erika Hartley
Education:
  • MA, Anthropology, 色色啦 Michigan University
  • BA, Anthropology, University of Michigan
Research Interests:
  • Archaeology of colonialism, the fur trade, and identity
  • Public archaeology and service-learning
  • Material analysis, curation, and collection-based research
Bio:

Erika Hartley is an instructor for the Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies at 色色啦 Michigan University. Her research interests include historical archaeology, colonialism, the fur trade, identity, material analysis, and public archaeology.

Since 2022, Erika has been the director of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, an interdisciplinary program in community service-learning that focuses on the eighteenth-century site of Fort St. Joseph in present-day Niles, Michigan. She joined the Project in 2015 as a graduate student and focused her research on examining the architectural remains of Fort St. Joseph so that insights could be gained on the types of structures present, the techniques and materials employed in their construction, and how the fort occupants were expressing their identity through architecture. Her master鈥檚 thesis, 鈥淎rchaeological Evidence of Architectural Remains at Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), Niles, MI,鈥 can be found through . From 2017-2021, she served as field director for the Project assisting with the 色色啦 archaeological field schools, numerous research projects, and even more outreach initiatives. Through this Project and her courses, she aims to help students understand the importance of academic and community collaborative research partnerships, demonstrating how each can learn and benefit from the other.

In 2019, she was selected as the Fort St. Joseph curatorial fellow through the Niles History Center. In this capacity, she is charged with inventorying, reorganizing, and improving the accessibility and visibility of the artifacts within the Fort St. Joseph collection held in Niles, Michigan. She also assists with research requests, outreach programs, and performing research on the collection鈥檚 artifacts.