Isabel Kasdin

Background

About Isabel Kasdin

For the past three years, I have worked in various positions for the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, New York. During my first summer at the museum in 2022, I worked as a deckhand and guide aboard our Solar tour boat, Solaris, giving tours of a lighthouse. In my second year, I was given the responsibility of schedule coordinator for the museum’s tour boat and participated in updating our historic tour programs. At this time, I worked simultaneously as a tour boat coordinator and museum educator, giving guided history tours through our museum to field trip classes and private groups. I recently completed an Anthropology 434 class, Archaeology Field School. The focus of our Field School will be biological archaeology in the Pine Street African Burial Ground and Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York. The purpose of this dig is to exhume formerly enslaved peoples buried in the Pine Street Cemetery and help reconstruct the details of their lives as a form of restorative justice. I have participated in a prior dig as an archaeological volunteer in Cuzco, Peru in the Spring of 2019. During my time in Peru, I assisted professional archaeologists in the excavation and conservation of Moche and Wari artifacts. My primary focus was lab work, where I learned proper cleaning techniques and catalogued various artifacts. The highlight of my experience was restoring an Incan Quipu from the 15th century made of human hair.