Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Chris Murphy

A word to the wise from Dr. Chris Murphy: if you want to become an archeologist, it’s not all about digging in the dirt. The professor of anthropology in the Department of History, Anthropology, and Philosophy says that when most people think about archeology, they think of an Indiana Jones movie.

“Many people think that archeologists dig artifacts out of the ground, and that’s all they have to do,” he says. “But it’s much more than that.”

In fact, often there are three phases of an archaeological dig, he says. The first phase is shovel testing, which consists of digging a grid pattern of small holes to look for artifacts. If you find things, you go to phase II, or testing. According to Dr. Murphy, phase II is more extensive digging in square, one by one meter units, to look for the “small stuff.” If the “small stuff” seems significant for the interpretation of the site, the archaeologist progresses to phase III, he says. The third and final phase is “data recovery” where the excavated artifacts are sent back to a lab for cleaning, sorting, cataloging, analysis, and used in the interpretation of the site.

“Archaeologists can do “in-field” preliminary analyses on things during the first phase, but many items have to be taken into the lab for processing before the analysis is complete,” he says.

Dr. Murphy first became interested in archeology at a young age, when most people become interested in things, he says. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology from the University of Georgia, and in 1971, he began teaching at Augusta State.

“As an undergraduate student, I had the opportunity to get out and do archaeological field work at UGA,” says Dr. Murphy. “But when I went back to school for my doctoral degree, my interests had shifted to cultural anthropology and my dissertation research was on Muslim food customs in India.”

When the Savannah, Ga., native returned to ASU in 1981, archaeological projects kept popping up, and he turned once again to archaeology. He worked on various projects on campus and in the community including the Ezekiel Harris House. In 1998, as major new construction was going on at ASU, the Special Coordinator for Architectural and Master Planning, Dr. Kathy Hamrick, arranged for Dr. Murphy to take charge of the legally mandated on-campus archaeological survey work.

“This arrangement saved the university from having to spend a lot of money hiring archaeological contractors to come in,” he says. “And people knew me, so it was much more convenient for everyone.”

In addition to performing survey tests on sites for new campus buildings, Dr. Murphy says there are some places on campus that he and his team need to go back to for more extensive digging.

Dr. Murphy points out that “documents from the 1830s suggest there were block houses built in the middle of the arsenal Quadrangle at the time of the nullification crisis. So one thing I’m interested in is looking for evidence of the block houses.”

What Dr. Murphy hopes to do as the major projects on campus taper off is shift more toward archaeology in the community. “If we could work on interesting projects in the community, it would enhance the experience and background of our students and provide a community service,” he says. “That would be great.”

Dr. Murphy sits on the boards of the Georgia Council of Professional Archaeologists and the Society for Georgia Archaeology. He’s also a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association and a member of the American Ethnological Society, the Federation of Small Anthropology Programs, the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, the Augusta Archaeological Society, the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, and the History Honor Society of Phi Alpha Theta.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Georgia and a doctoral degree from the University of Virginia.

Who: Dr. Chris Murphy

Position: Professor of anthropology in the Department of History, Anthropology, and Philosophy

How long at ASU?: 34 years this fall

Did you know?: Dr. Murphy has six cats at home, four inside and two outside. Two of his feline friends are ocicats, (cross of Abyssinian, Siamese, and American Shorthairs)

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