Jordi A. Rivera Prince

Jordi A. Rivera Prince is a bioarchaeologist and mortuary archaeologist with a focus on coastal communities both in the Andes pre-colonization and New England post-colonization. Her work addresses themes such as social inequality, materiality of the body, critical knowledge production, and equity issues in archaeological practice.

In the Andes, her research explores how communities embodied and ritually materialized significant social changes (monumentality, collapse) on the North Coast of Perú as a Co-Director of the Proyecto Arqueológico Huanchaco Ancestral y su Cultura Marítima (PROHACUM). In Rhode Island, Dr. Rivera Prince is Co-Director of the North Burial Ground Documentation Project (NBG-DP), a collaborative, non-invasive project exploring social issues throughout Providence's history, including changes in religious beliefs, public health and life expectancy throughout time, and the experiences of communities typically not centered in United States historical narratives.

Dr. Rivera Prince received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, after which she worked at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Florida, following which she was a Visiting Assistant Professor (2023-2024) and then Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow (2024-2026) at Brown University. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, a Fulbright Open Research Award, the H. and T. King Grant for Archaeology of the Ancient Americas, the Data Science Institute at Brown University, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University, among others.

Dr. Rivera Prince is a Registered Professional Archaeologist (#18386). She is also on the Editorial Advisory Board of Andean Past, Chair of the Committee on the Americas for the Society for American Archaeology, and on the Register for Professional Archaeologists Board of Directors as the American Anthropological Association Director.

Fields of Study: bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, maritime archaeology, coastal communities, Central Andes, New England, social inequality, materiality of the body, critical knowledge production, equity issues in archaeological practice.

Personal website: https://jriveraprince.github.io/

Selected/Recent publications

Articles

Rivera Prince, Jordi A. (2026). Laying Siege to Violent Narratives: A Critique of the Claims for Enhanced Violence in the Salinar (ca. 400 – 200/150 BCE). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 81: 101747. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaa.2025.101747

Rivera Prince, Jordi., Kylie E. Quave, Di Hu, and Katherine L. Chiou. (2026). Methodological Habitus: Complicating Categories, Taxonomies, and Scientism in Archaeology. Journal of Field Archaeology 51(2): 78-93. DOI: 10.1080/00934690.2025.2582385.

Katherine L. Chiou, Di Hu, Kylie E. Quave, Jordi A. Rivera Prince, Andrew Warnes, Psyche Williams-Forson, Peggy Brunache, Dana N. Bardolph, and Michael P. Fedoroff. (2026). Multiple Inequalities in Every Meal: Theorizing the Intersectional Erasure of Food Producers both Past and Present. Food, Culture & Society 29(2): 422–452. DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2025.2526299.

Rivera Prince, Jordi A., Emily Blackwood, Madeleine Landrum, Elizabeth L. Leclerc, Emily B. Milton, Monica Barnes, Kristina Douglass, María José Figuerero Torres, María A. Gutiérrez, Sarah Herr, Kirk A. Maasch, Kylie Quave, and Daniel H. Sandweiss. (2025). Writing in Community: Relationship Building and Accountability in Knowledge Production. American Anthropologist 127(2): 319-338. DOI: 10.1111/aman.28070.

Rivera Prince, Jordi A., and Amanda Brock Morales. (2024). Backdirting: Theorizing Backdirt through Time, Place, and Process. Journal of Field Archaeology Special Issue “On Backdirt.” Invited paper. 42(2): 98-114. DOI: 10.1080/00934690.2024.2307116.

Edited Volumes

Rivera Prince, Jordi A. and Justine M. Shaw (editors). (2027) (Re)Creating New Worlds: The Archaeology of Social Transformations. University Press of Florida.