Deianira Morris

About Deianira Morris

Deianira (Dee) Morris grew up in rural Ohio, and received her Associate’s degree in Anthropology from Cochise College in 2017. After that, Dee continued her academic career at the University of Arizona, where I earned a BA in Anthropology in 2019. During Dee’s undergraduate studies, she was also a student worker at the Arizona State Museum (ASM). After graduation, Dee was hired into the Archaeological Repository of ASM, where she will continue to work while she pursues a Masters, and then a PhD, in archaeology.

Dee has always been interested in how people in the past contended with the dynamic challenges, achievements, and motivations that comprise the human experience of life. Dee has chosen to approach this question by studying how different groups of people who lived during the American Territorial period interacted with one another and maintained their unique cultural identities during times of significant social change.

Because of her work at ASM, Dee is deeply interested in how the archaeological collections that are curated at museums can be used to expand our understanding of the past, and her work as a graduate student will primarily focus on utilizing museum collections. More recently, Dee has discovered that she really likes historic buildings too! As such, the focus of her research will be to integrate information about historic houses with data collected from museum artifacts to add to our knowledge of the past.

Research Areas

Historic-era Tucson, American Territorial Southwest

Research Interests

Historical archaeology, American historic architecture, museum collections, culture contact, identity, social contradiction, cultural interaction, public archaeology, archaeological theory, collections management.