David Bruner, Ph.D.

Laboratory Manager/Senior Project Manager

Dr. David Bruner is the Laboratory Manager and a Senior Project Manager for ESI.  During his 19 years of experience, Dr. Bruner has conducted archaeological and historical investigations at prehistoric and historic sites in Arkansas, Mississippi, New York State, Pennsylvania, and Texas.  As the Director of Field Studies for the Yates Community Archaeology Program (2001-2008), Dr. Bruner directed multiple excavations across Houston’s Fourth Ward. 

            In 2007, Dr. Bruner completed his doctorate in Anthropology at Binghamton University – State University of New York.  His dissertation focused on expressions of identity and resistance in African-American cemeteries across Southeast Texas.  Dr. Bruner identified and described the meanings behind a previously unidentified mortuary practice - the use of upside-down and backwards text on African-American grave markers.  The importance of this non-traditional mortuary practice can be traced back to belief systems in West Africa dealing with concepts of life and an afterlife.  His findings also included an analysis on the ways in which social surveillance constrains the expression of vernacular mortuary practices.

            Dr. Bruner received his Master’s degree and Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Houston.  His undergraduate and graduate research focused on archaeological research of the Levi Jordan Plantation located in Brazoria County, Texas.  His Master’s level research combined analyses of ritual deposits from the slave and tenant quarters with cemetery features from the associated slave and tenant cemetery.

            In 2003, Dr Bruner joined Dr. Carol McDavid as Co-Director of the Yates Community Archaeology Project (YCAP).  The Yates Community Archaeology Project is a program of the Rutherford B. H. Yates Museum of African-American Printing History, located in Houston’s Fourth Ward, also known as Freedmen’s Town.  As a community-based non-profit archaeology program, YCAP provided a source of empowerment for stakeholders interested in exploring and preserving the cultural resources of this unique historic African-American community.  Over the course of five years, Dr. Bruner and Dr. McDavid taught five archaeological field schools for Houston colleges and provided opportunities for hundreds of volunteers to participate in a spectrum of archaeological excavations and museum operation activities.  Excavations and historical research of Freedmen’s Town produced evidence of day-to-day life that dramatically added to the historical record and challenged current-day misconceptions about post-bellum African-American life in Houston.

            Over the course of completing his undergraduate and graduate degrees, Dr. Bruner participated in over forty prehistoric and historic cultural resource management projects across five states.  During his graduate work at Binghamton University in New York State, Dr. Bruner served as a Senior Research Assistant where he worked with a team of archaeologists in completing phase I, II, and III cultural resource management projects.  Since joining Earth Search, Dr. Bruner has managed the analysis and conservation of on-going collections containing hundreds of thousands of historic and prehistoric artifacts.   

            Dr. Bruner has taught forty college-level courses in Anthropology ranging from Introduction to Archaeology, to Methods in Historical Archaeology, to Archaeological Field Schools.  His students have presented papers at professional conferences, won awards for presentations of honors projects, and have achieved employment in museums, at institutions of higher learning, and with cultural resource management firms.  Dr. Bruner has served as a board member of the Montgomery County Historical and Genealogical Society, and currently serves as an advisory board member of the Rutherford B. H. Yates Museum, and the Community Archaeology Research Institute.  Dr. Bruner is a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Historical Archaeology.