Lydia Wilson Marshall's scholarship focuses on the archaeology of slavery, including slaving, emancipation, and self-emancipation. In her Ph.D. research, she investigated communities formed by runaway slaves in 19th-century coastal Kenya. After coming to Ã×À¼ÌåÓý, Marshall initiated a local research program about Putnam County’s so-called “Exodusters". The exodus of African Americans from the U.S. South in the late 1870s and early 1880s encompassed the relocation of tens of thousands of people to a variety of northern and western states, including Indiana. Most recently, she has undertaken a collaborative research project with Dr. Thomas Biginagwa (University of Dar es Salaam) at Kikole in southwestern Tanzania. Kikole was an early 20th-century entrepôt used in the trade of enslaved captives and ivory.

These research projects stem from a broader interest in the comparison of different systems of slavery, both between regions and across time. Marshall has explored this topic in depth in her edited books, "The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion" (2015, SIU Press) and "Landscapes of Slavery in Africa" (2021, Routledge). She has additionally published her research in American Antiquity, Historical Archaeology, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, African Archaeological Review, and the Journal of African Archaeology, among other venues.

Her scholarship has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She received the 2018 John L. Cotter Award for excellence in early career scholarship from the Society for Historical Archaeology.

• Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Virginia (2011).
• M.A., Anthropology, University of Virginia (2007).
• B.A. Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College (2003).

• 2024 “Ties that Bind: The Long Emancipation and Status Ambiguity in Early 20th-Century Southwestern Tanzania.” American Antiquity 89 (4): 608–626. Co-authored with Thomas John Biginagwa.
• 2024 “Marronage Beyond Slavery?” In Landscapes of Movement and Predation: Perspectives from Archaeology, History, and Anthropology, edited by Brenda J. Bowser and Catherine M. Cameron, 245–269. Amerind Studies in Anthropology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Co-authored with Thomas John Biginagwa.
• 2022 “Material Culture, Archaeology and Slavery.” In Writing the History of Slavery, edited by David Doddington and Enrico Dal Lago, 377–398. London: Bloomsbury.
• 2021 Landscapes of Slavery in Africa. New York: Routledge.
• 2020 “Archaeology and Heritage of Slavery in Eastern Africa.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History.
• 2019 “Consumer Choice and Beads in Fugitive Slave Villages in Nineteenth-Century Kenya.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 23 (1): 103–128.
• 2018 “Maroon Archaeology beyond the Americas: A View from Kenya.” Historical Archaeology 52 (4): 717–740.
• 2018 “The Legacy of Slavery in the Swahili World.” In The Swahili World, edited by Adria LaViolette and Stephanie Wynne-Jones, 566–576. New York: Routledge. Co-authored with Herman Kiriama.
• 2017 “European Colonialism and Globalization in Africa in the 19th Century CE.” In The Routledge Handbook of Globalization and Archaeology, edited by Tamar Hodos, 123–138. New York: Routledge.
• 2015 The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
• 2015 “Introduction: The Comparative Archaeology of Slavery.” In The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion, edited by Lydia Wilson Marshall, 1–23. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
• 2015 “Marronage and the Politics of Memory: Fugitive Slaves, Interaction, and Integration in 19th-Century Kenya.” In The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion, edited by Lydia Wilson Marshall, 276–299. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
• 2012 “Spatiality and the Interpretation of Identity Formation: Fugitive Slave Community Creation in 19th-Century Kenya.” African Archaeological Review 29 (4): 355–381.
• 2012 “Typological and Interpretive Analysis of a 19th-Century Bead Cache in Coastal Kenya.” Journal of African Archaeology 10 (2): 189–205.