Paul Mullins

I heard yesterday about Paul Mullins’ passing. He was an archaeologist at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis who specialized in historical and contemporary archaeology.

Tragically, I never had the chance to meet Paul in person, but his work and his generosity influenced my pivot from being a Mediterranean archaeologist to working on American material and thinking about the archaeology of the contemporary world.

He was prolific, but his work on the archaeology of consumer culture and on the archaeology of the African-American community in Indianapolis was especially inspiring to me. His relatively short survey, The Archaeology of Consumer Culture blew my mind when I first read it and shaped my view of the archaeology of the contemporary world in profound ways. It was only years later that I explored the rest of Paul’s remarkable research: the archaeology of communities displaced by IUPUI’s campus, Black suburbs in Indianapolis, and even his early work on Black consumerism in Anapolis. This work shaped my view of contemporary consumerism, campuses, race, and our work on how suburbs created aspirational landscapes. 

On a personal note, when I was first trying to bring our work with the North Dakota Man Camp project together into an article for Historical Archaeology, Paul mentored me on how to articulate our research in a way that was meaningful to the discipline of Historical Archaeology. This went far beyond anything I’ve ever expected or encountered with a journal editor. It has made a lasting impact on me as a reader, editor, and a colleague.

He also was one of the first people to read my little edited volume Punk Archaeology and take it seriously. He posted about it on his blog in 2015 where he also commented on an SHA panel on a similar topic and offered some incisive critiques. We even chatted briefly about the book in the comments.

Finally, I was fortunate enough to work with him briefly as an editor of a very recent volume based on the 2021 CHAT conference. Paul collaborated with students on a piece that considered how the COVID pandemic changed their sense of their environment. It was innovative, collaborative, and insightful, and he shepherded it through the publication process even as his health declined.

It seems unfair that illness would take someone like Paul so young and before I had a chance to meet him and share my enthusiasm for his work and my gratitude for his influence on my thinking in person.