Biographical Details

Dr. Richards specializes in maritime archaeological theory and method with a focus on cultural site formation processes of the archaeological record. He has an interest 19th and 20th century maritime history, the history of technology, and in comparative and anthropological approaches to maritime archaeological subjects. He has been involved in field schools run by Departments of Archaeology at Flinders University (South Australia), and James Cook University (Queensland), and has been employed in cultural heritage management work by the State Governments of South Australia and Tasmania. His research has appeared in the Australasian Journal of Maritime Archaeology (previously the Bulletin of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology), The Great Circle (the journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History), Tributaries (the journal of the North Carolina Maritime History Council), the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, the Bermuda Journal of Maritime History and Archaeology, and Historical Archaeology as well as other journal articles, book chapters, and numerous reports and reviews. He is co-author (with Robyn Hartell) of The Garden Island Ships’ Graveyard Maritime Heritage Trail (Government of South Australia, 2001), author of Ships’ Graveyards: Abandoned Watercraft and the Archaeological Formation Process (University Press of Florida, 2008), and co-editor of The Archaeology of Watercraft Abandonment (with Sami Seeb, Springer Press, 2013). Dr. Richards is an active member of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology (serving on their editorial board, and their newsletter editor 2001-2006) and the Australian Association for Maritime History. He is a former Associate Editor for the journal Historical Archaeology, and currently sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of Maritime Archaeology.

Richards served as the Program Head for the UNC Coastal Studies Institute’s Maritime Heritage Program while a joint appointment with ECU’s Department of History from 2011-2018.  Dr. Richards assumed the role of Director of the Program in Maritime Studies (Department of History) at East Carolina University (Greenville, NC) in 2018.  He has taught classes in the history, theory, method, and ethics of maritime archaeology, field schools, and cultural heritage management at ECU since 2003.