Jason Boroughs

Dr. Jason Boroughs is the Principal Archaeologist at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, where he has served since 2016. With 30 years of field experience excavating historic sites in the Chesapeake Bay region, New England, and the Caribbean, his primary research focuses on Chesapeake plantation communities through enslavement and emancipation. 

His research interests include social and cultural transformations within the African-Atlantic diaspora, landscape archaeology, public engagement, and memory and the politics of heritage. He has held a variety of research and teaching positions in institutions such as the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the College of William and Mary, and Salisbury University on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary. 

He directs an annual field program in historical archaeology open to GWU students each summer at Mount Vernon (ANTH 3835). 

Interviews with Dr. Boroughs about recent archaeological discoveries have been featured in the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, and on a variety of local and nationally televised news programs.