EricÌýJones

  • Associate Professor
  • (PHD
  • PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
  • 2008)
Address

Hale 179

Office Hours

Tuesdays: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM, in Person (Hale 179)

Dr. Jones is a historical archaeologist with research specialties in settlement ecology, landscapes, rural farming communities, socioeconomics, and demography. 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. He studiesÌýlate 19th and early 20th-century rural communities in the U.S., the factors that gave rise to commercial farming, and the impacts commercialization had on household consumption, farming practices, community economics and social interactions, landscapes, and health and mortality. Essentially, his work is examining how modern rural communities formed around family farms as businesses. He is currently working with communities in Madison County, New York, where he grew up on a third generation family-run dairy farm, and locally in Boulder County.
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Recent Articles

  • Eric E. Jones. 2026. A Tale of Three Towns: Local Conditions and the Commercialization of Farming in 19th-Century New York, USA. International Journal of HistoricalÌýArchaeology.
  • DeWitte, Sharon N., Eric E. Jones, Emily Reardon, and Annabelle J. Lewis. 2026. Gender/sex and health in urban and rural 19th-century New York State. American Journal of Biological Anthropology.Ìý
  • Eric E. Jones, Annabelle J. Lewis, Kelli M. Hajek, Amber M. Wellings, and Abagail Dietrich. 2025. Women’s Labor and Dairy Production in a Late 19th-Century Upstate New York Town. Historical Archaeology.
  • Sharon N. DeWitte, Eric E. Jones, and Catherine Livingston. 2025. Health and Mortality in the 19th-Century Rural U.S.: the Second Epidemiological Transition in Madison County, NY. American Journal of Human Biology.
  • Jones, Eric E., Jordan Davis, Amber M. Wellings, and Kelli M. Hajek. 2024.ÌýThe Settlement Ecology of Emerging Commercial Dairy Farming in the 19th-Century Northeast. Historical Archaeology 58(4).
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Books

  • Kellet, Luke C. And Eric E. Jones (editors). 2017. Settlement Ecology of the AncientÌýAmericas.ÌýRoutledge Press, London
  • Jones, Eric E. And John L. Creese (editors). 2016. Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology: Investigations into Pre-Columbian Iroquoian Space and Place. University Press Colorado, Boulder
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Current Project

The Settlement Ecology of Early Rural America (SEERA) Project examines how and why late 19th- and early 20th-century farmers shifted from subsistence to commercial farming and the impact that had on their health, households, communities, and landscapes. Our work uses census records and other archivalÌýsources, historic maps and GIS, oral histories, and artifacts to examine these topics. This was a critical time in the United States, when modern social, political, and economic systems were forming in conjunction with industrialization and the creation of corporation-based capitalism. Modern rural communities also began to form at this time. We want to provide deep historical descriptions and explanations of this process because solutions to the problems facing rural communities today, from economic extraction to lack of access to healthcare, cannot be addressed without a full understanding the historical causes behind them. This work is done with farmers and other residents of Madison County, NY.
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Interested in the SEERA Project?

Dr. Jones is looking for students, both undergraduate and graduate, interested in studying 19th- and early 20th-century rural communities in the United States. Given the wide range of approaches used in the project, including landscape archaeology, artifact analysis, and archival research, students with any related interests are encouraged to reach out about opportunities. Students should bring a strong desire to collaborate with communities connected to their work. Email Dr. Jones if you are interested and visit the Settlement Ecology Research Group (SERG) website (link below the picture to the left) for more information on our work and that of other researchers in the group.Ìý