Theresa A. Singleton

Theresa A. Singleton (born April 15, 1952) is an archaeologist and writer who focuses on the archaeology of African Americans, the African diaspora, and slavery in the United States. She is one of the foremost archaeologists taking a comparative approach to the study of slavery in the Americas. Singleton has been involved in the excavation of slave residences in the southern United States and in the Caribbean. She is currently a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University.

Singleton became the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in historical archaeology and African American history and culture in 1980 from the University of Florida, beginning her research career by studying the Gullah-Geechee of coastal Georgia. In 1991, she was working as an associate curator of historical archaeology for the Smithsonian Institution. Singleton and Elizabeth Scott created the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee in the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2014, she was awarded the J.C. Harrington Award, and became the first African American to earn the award.

Singleton has served on a number of editorial boards, including for the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Archaeologies (World Archaeological Congress), and the Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, as well as more than a dozen professional boards and committees.

The Journal of American History called The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life (1985), edited by Singleton, "a notably coherent group of papers that allow historians to look in new and stimulating directions to analyze the past." Singleton also edited I, Too, Am American: Archaeological Studies of African American Life (1999) which tells "the story of anonymous black Americans, forgotten in written records."

Singleton's most recent book, Slavery Behind the Wall: An Archaeology of a Cuban Coffee Plantation (2015), is a monograph that situates her excavations at the Cuban coffee plantation of Cafetal Biajacas within the comparative context of Caribbean coffee and sugar plantations.

• The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. 1985. ISBN 9780126464801.(editor)
• Singleton, Theresa A. (1990). "The Archaeology of the Plantation South: A Review of Approaches and Goals". Historical Archaeology. 24 (4): 70–77. doi:10.1007/BF03373498. JSTOR 25616051.
• The Archaeology of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Ann Arbor, MI: Society for Historical Archaeology. 1995. ISBN 9781886818002.
• Singleton, Theresa A. (1997). "Facing the Challenges of a Public African-American Archaeology". Historical Archaeology. 31 (3): 146–152. doi:10.1007/BF03374238. JSTOR 25616556.
• 'I, Too, Am America': Archaeological Studies of African American Life. Charlottesville: University of Press of Virginia. 1999. ISBN 9780813918426. (editor)
• Singleton, Theresa (1999-04-01). "The Slave Trade Remembered on the Former Gold and Slave Coasts". Slavery & Abolition. 20 (1): 150–169. doi:10.1080/01440399908575273. ISSN 0144-039X.
• Slavery Behind the Wall: An Archaeology of a Cuban Coffee Plantation. with Paul A. Shackel. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2015. ISBN 9780813060729.CS1 maint: others (link)