Institute for New Hampshire Studies

David R. Starbuck

Assistant Professor of Anthroplogy/Sociology
B.A., University of Rochester
M.Phil, Ph.D., Yale University

Office: Rounds Hall M104
Telephone: (603) 535-3076
E-mail: dstarbuck@plymouth.edu

David Starbuck teaches both archaeology and physical anthropology. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale University in 1975 and has taught at Plymouth State since 1992. His training was in the comparative analysis of early civilizations, with a primary focus on Mesoamerican archaeology and Near Eastern archaeology; and his doctoral dissertation was an analysis of the food at the great Precolumbian city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico.

David has directed excavations in New Hampshire since 1975, at a variety of historic, prehistoric and industrial sites, and he is perhaps best known for the many excavations he has conducted at Canterbury Shaker Village, together with students from Plymouth and other universities. He has also directed excavations at many of the major 18th-century forts and battlefields from the French & Indian War and the Revolutionary War, and most recently he conducted an excavation at the grave site of Jane McCrea, the most famous woman murdered and scalped during the American Revolution.

David also directs Plymouth's annual archaeology field school in Scotland; each summer since 2000 he has taken Plymouth students to dig at medieval and post-medieval sites that were once occupied by Clan MacFarlane. Plymouth students working with David are documenting the ruins of the earliest MacFarlane castle (ca. A.D. 1400-1650), located on an island in Loch Lomond, as well as recording farm sites scattered throughout the hills and glens.

Some of his recent books from the University Press of New England include:

Rangers and Redcoats on the Hudson (due out June 2004)
Neither Plain Nor Simple (2003)
Massacre at Fort William Henry (2002)
The Great Warpath (1999)
A Shaker Family Album (1998)