Dr. Jones is a historical archaeologist with research specialties in settlement ecology, landscapes and built environments, socioeconomic interactions, and demographic archaeology. His research is community-based and multiscalar and incorporates GIS-based landscape reconstruction and spatial analysis; historic documents, census records, and oral histories; and artifact analysis.
His current focus is on late 1800s rural communities in the U.S. and the impact of the rise of commercial farming on household economics, community social interactions, landscapes, and health and mortality. Essentially, his work is examining how rural U.S. farming communities formed. He is currently working with communities in the Northeast; however, exploratory projects in the Plains and Front Range are on the horizon. This work expands upon his previous settlement ecology research into Haudenosaunee and Piedmont Siouan Indigenous communities just prior to and during European colonization of eastern North America.
Publications
- Jones, Eric E., Jordan Davis, Amber M. Wellings, and Kelli M. Hajek. 2024. The Settlement Ecology of Emerging Commercial Dairy Farming in the 19th-Century Northeast. Historical Archaeology 58(2)
- Capps, Matthew and Eric E. Jones. 2021. Morphological and Functional Variability in Triangular Projectile Points in the Piedmont Southeast, 1300 -1600 CE. Southeastern Archaeology 40(4): 266-283.
- Jones, Eric E., Maya B. Krause, Caroline Watson, and Grayson O’Saile. 2020. Economic and Social Interaction in the Piedmont Village Tradition-Mississippian Boundarylands of the North American Southeast, 1200-1600 CE. American Antiquity.
- Jones, Eric E. 2019. Why Do We Live Where We Do? Teaching Native American Settlement Ecology in the North Carolina Piedmont, in Grounded Education in the Environmental Humanities: Exploring Place-Based Pedagogies in the South, edited by Lucas Johnston and Dave Aftandilian, pp. 115-131, Routledge Press, New York.
- Jones, Eric E. 2018. When Villages Do Not Form: A Case Study from the Piedmont Village Tradition-Mississippian Borderlands, AD 1200-1600, in The Power of Villages, edited by Victor S. Thompson and Jennifer Birch, pp. 73-88, University of Florida Press, Gainesville, FL.
- Jones, Eric E. 2017. Significance and Context in GIS-Based Spatial Archaeology: A Case Study from Southeastern North America. Journal of Archaeological Science 84C: 54–62.
- Jones, Eric E. 2017. Haudenosaunee Settlement Ecology Before and After the Arrival of Europeans in Northeastern North America. In Frontiers of Colonialism, edited by Christine Beaule, pp. 31-58, University of Florida Press, Gainesville, FL.
- Jones, Eric E. and Peter Ellis. 2016. Multiscalar Settlement Ecology Study Of Piedmont Village Tradition Communities In North Carolina, AD 1000–1600. Southeastern Archaeology 35(2):85-114.
- Jones, Eric E. 2016. Refining Our Understanding of Haudenosaunee Settlement Location Choices. In Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology: Investigations into Pre-Columbian Iroquoian Space and Place, edited by Eric E. Jones and John L. Creese, pp. 145-170, University Press Colorado, Boulder.
- Jones Eric E. 2015. The Settlement Ecology of Middle-Range Societies in the Western North Carolina Piedmont, AD 1000–1600. North Carolina Archaeology 64:1–32.
- Jones, Eric E. 2014. A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Old World Disease Events in North America, AD 1517–1803. American Antiquity 79(3):487–506.
*Professor Jones is currently accepting Ph.D. applicants for Fall 2024
