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UMass Boston alumni Joe Bagley G’13 and Holly Herbster G’05’s new book, The Historical Archaeology of Massachusetts, uncovers four centuries of the Commonwealth’s story through the sites and artifacts that reveal the voices and histories traditional narratives often leave out.

Earlier this month, UMass Boston alumni Joe Bagley G’13 and Holly Herbster G’05 released The Historical Archaeology of Massachusetts, a publication that traces four centuries of Bay State history through the physical evidence still embedded in its landscapes—foundations, artifacts, and sites that reveal stories traditional narratives often miss. 

The book was commissioned by the University Press of Florida as part of its national series, American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, which features archaeological overviews from across the country. Editors invited Bagley and Herbster to create a wide-ranging overview that would move beyond Massachusetts’ familiar history and instead explore the Commonwealth through archaeological sites and material culture. The authors had free rein in shaping the themes, topics, and examples they included—one of the few clear directives was simply to keep the narrative from centering entirely on Boston or the eastern coast. 

That turned out to be easier said than done because archaeology doesn’t distribute itself evenly. The richest body of excavated evidence clusters in eastern Massachusetts, where development has triggered decades of digs. In Western Massachusetts, the record is more often built through background research and large-scale surveys—“desktop surveys”—that map what might be found. Valuable groundwork, Herbster explained, but with fewer excavated sites to anchor interpretation, it often remains archaeological potential. 

“I kept reading 300-page reports that ended with, ‘Good spot for archaeology,’ and I’d think: ‘I agree!’” Bagley said. “It was definitely a challenge.” 

Even with those limitations, the book stretches across the Commonwealth and across centuries—from early Indigenous–European interactions and colonial settlement to slavery and its aftermath, industrialization, globalism, and conflicts that reshaped communities across the region. Throughout, Herbster and Bagley work to center the people and places mainstream history has too often pushed to the sides. 

“We’re both really invested in highlighting the unrecorded—or under-recorded—histories of people in Massachusetts who haven’t been part of the dominant culture,” Bagley said. He noted that one of the goals of the series is to foreground the diversity of people and places across the Commonwealth. “While it’s not our place to tell the history of people who are still here today—like Native Americans, or descendants of the African Americans who were first brought to Massachusetts—I hope we’ve been able to point readers to the sources of those studies. Wherever possible, we also tried to highlight work being done by and with descendant communities.” 

Herbster added, “It was important to us that the diversity narrative is ingrained throughout the book—not confined to one chapter.” 

Writing the book also surfaced a familiar truth of the field: no matter how much has been documented, Massachusetts still holds sites that archaeologists can only speculate about—because they remain inaccessible, privately owned, or simply unexplored. 

“Some of the most compelling sites haven’t been touched yet,” Bagley said, pointing to places he hopes will one day be explored more fully—like the Faneuil estate in Brighton, tied to both enslavement and Indigenous history, or Nonantum, a historic Praying Indian town whose layers remain largely unexamined. Herbster, meanwhile, finds herself drawn to the Elizabeth Islands, which have remained mostly undeveloped for centuries and could offer rare insight into coastal life without the interruptions of dense modern construction. 

Both authors brought decades of hands-on experience in Massachusetts archaeology to the project. Herbster, a senior archaeologist and principal investigator at The Public Archaeology Laboratory, has spent much of her career leading projects across New England and collaborating with Native communities. Bagley, Boston’s City Archaeologist since 2011, oversees collections, reviews archaeological work across the city, and helps translate findings for the public. Their professional paths often intersect—through field schools, conferences, and shared work across the region. They’re currently collaborating on the Boston Harbor Islands Archaeological Climate Action Plan, an initiative between the City of Boston, the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, and climate experts to document and protect dozens of vulnerable, eroding Indigenous and historical sites. 

Bagley noted that archaeology is never static: “Because it’s an iterative process, we’ve learned enough to ask new questions—questions we couldn’t ask originally.”  

Beyond the sites themselves, The Historical Archaeology of Massachusetts tracks how archaeology has evolved as a discipline—and how interpretation shifts depending on what questions researchers choose to ask. In Massachusetts, some sites have been excavated and revisited multiple times across more than a century, with each generation working through different priorities, methods, and assumptions. In short, Massachusetts has plenty of stories still waiting underfoot.

“We have the sort of unique situation in Massachusetts where we have sites that have been excavated and analyzed, in some cases, three or four times now, over a period that spans more than 100 years,” Bagley said, adding that archaeology is not a one-and-done endeavor. “It’s really cool that we were able to talk about some of those sites and how interpretations have changed over time. We keep learning new things.”