It’s important to start every story at the beginning, so in MJM’s upcoming commemorative exhibition “What the House Saw: 260 years of stories from MJM’s Collection & Community,” we are starting with before the Mansion was built in 1765. We will be rolling out each era in the exhibition for the rest of 2025’s Virtual Parlor Chats under the banner Connect260. During May’s installment of Connect260, join Dr. Matthew Reilly, CCNY professor and archeologist to talk about the work he’s done with Mansion staff in the preparation of Indigenous artifacts for this exhibition from past excavations of the Morris-Jumel property. Find out more about the Indigenous History of the Mansion in May’s installment of Connect260!

Dr. Matthew C. Reilly is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Programs at the City College of New York and Co-Subfield Coordinator for Archaeology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He currently directs archaeological research in Barbados and with the Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology project in Liberia. His work explores issues of race, colonialism, heritage, slavery, sovereignty, and freedom in the Caribbean and West Africa. In addition to multiple peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, he is the co-editor of Pre-Colonial and Post-Contact Archaeology in Barbados: Past Present, and Future Research Directions (2019) and author of Archaeology below the Cliff: Race, Class, and Redlegs in Barbadian Sugar Society (2019).