About

Patricia E. Rubertone is a Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, specializing in the study of colonial encounters, cultural landscapes, historical archaeology, material culture, and Native Americans. Her research combines archaeology, history, and anthropology to examine colonialism, landscapes, and cultural diversity and difference, with a focus on Native American experiences in postcolonial contexts in New England. She has conducted archaeological and historical studies on Native American and European interactions, emphasizing how material culture reflects identities and intersections of difference rather than social hierarchies or acculturation. Her long-term research includes the excavation of a 17th-century Narragansett Indian burial ground and collaborative projects with the Narragansett Indians, aiming to interpret the material record to challenge common knowledge about Native peoples. She has also explored multi-ethnic archaeological histories at sites like Cocumscussoc, examining changes in cultural landscapes involving European colonists, African slaves, and Native Americans. Currently, her research investigates Native American monuments in New England, focusing on how memorials create, sustain, and erase history and cultural identity through landscape and diachronic approaches. Her work emphasizes holistic methods, integrating archaeology, archival data, and oral histories to construct comprehensive accounts of colonial and Native histories.

Research topics

• Intensive care medicine
• Medicine
• Archaeology
• Surgery
• Geography
• History

Selected publications

• Can We Enhance Shared Decision-making for Periacetabular Osteotomy Surgery? A Qualitative Study of Patient Experiences

  Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research · 2024 · 1 citations

  • Medicine
  • Surgery
  • Intensive care medicine

  BACKGROUND: Periacetabular osteotomy (PAO) surgery presents an opportunity for shared decision-making (SDM) and may be facilitated by decision-making tools. Currently, no diagnosis or treatment-specific decision-making tools exist for this patient population. Understanding patient PAO surgery decision-making experiences and processes would enable development of a treatment-specific decision-making tool and would help hip preservation surgeons with SDM practices. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: Qualitative methodology was used to address the following questions: (1) What were the information support needs of adult patients with hip dysplasia who decided to have PAO? (2) What was important to adult patients with hip dysplasia who decided to have PAO? (3) How did adult patients with hip dysplasia who have undergone PAO experience the surgical decision-making process? (4) What elements of SDM did adult patients with hip dysplasia experience with their surgeons when deciding to have PAO? METHODS: Fifteen volunteer, English-speaking patients in the United States who had been diagnosed with hip dysplasia and who had undergone PAO surgery 6 to 12 months prior to the study were recruited through five PAO surgery Facebook support groups. Individuals were excluded if they had an underlying neuromuscular condition or other diagnosis related to nondevelopmental dysplasia of the hip or if they had a previous PAO surgery > 12 months before data collection. We used purposive sampling strategies to promote sample heterogeneity based on age and preoperative activity level, as these are characteristics that may impact decision-making. Participants were categorized into three age groups: 20 to 29 years, 30 to 39 years, and ≥ 40 years. Participants were also categorized as having "low activity," "moderate activity," or "high activity" preoperatively based on self-reported University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Activity Scale scores. Participants were enrolled consecutively if they met the inclusion criteria and fulfilled one of our sampling categories; we had plans to enroll more participants if thematic saturation was not achieved through the first 15 interviews. Participants included 14 women and one man ranging in age from 23 to 48 years, and all had undergone PAO surgery for hip dysplasia 6 to 12 months prior to the interview. One-on-one semistructured interviews were conducted with each participant by a single interviewer through Zoom video conferencing using video and audio recording. Participants answered semistructured interview questions and provided verbal responses to survey questions so researchers could gain demographic information and details about their symptoms, diagnosis, and PAO surgery between June 2021 and August 2021. Quantitative survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were analyzed by three researchers using principles of reflexive thematic analysis. Candidate themes were iteratively defined and redefined until central themes were developed that were distinctly different, yet centrally relevant, and answered the research questions. All codes that informed category and theme development were generated within the first six transcripts that were analyzed. The team felt that thematic saturation was established with the 15 interviews. RESULTS: The main information needs for adult patients with hip dysplasia included diagnosis and treatment-related information, as well as logistics related to surgery and recovery. Many patients described that their information needs were only partially met by their surgeon; most engaged in additional information-seeking from scientific research and online resources and relied on patient peers to meet information needs about the lived experience and logistics related to surgery and recovery. It was important to patients that PAO surgery could preserve their native hip or delay THA and that PAO surgery was likely to reduce their pain and improve function; decision-making was facilitated when patients were able to identify how the indications and goals of PAO surgery aligned with their own situation and goals for surgery. Patients' experiences with decision-making were more positive when information needs were met, when indications and goals for PAO surgery aligned with their personal values and goals, and when their preferred and actual decision-making roles aligned. Adult patients with hip dysplasia described high variability in the extent to which patients were invited to share personal preferences, values, and goals around PAO surgery and the extent to which preferred patient decision-making roles were assessed. CONCLUSION: We found that elements of SDM are not consistently integrated into hip preservation practice. The knowledge gained through this work about patient PAO surgery information needs, what matters to patients when deciding to have surgery, and their experiences with PAO surgery decision-making can inform future PAO surgery decision-making tool development. Future studies are needed to validate the findings of this study and to determine whether they are generalizable to adult patients with hip dysplasia with different demographic characteristics or to patients who do not participate in social media support groups. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Surgeons should recognize that patients are likely to leave their office without their information needs being met. SDM strategies can promote more effective information exchanges in the clinic so surgeons can help patients identify their information needs, provide education and direction to accurate and reputable resources to meet those needs, and help patients appraise information they gather and apply it to their personal situation. Hip preservation surgeons can use the sample SDM script and checklist offered here to support adult patients with hip dysplasia who are making PAO surgery decisions until a future diagnosis and treatment-specific decision-making tool is available.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bruchac, Margaret M.Savage kin: indigenous informants and American anthropologists. xviii, 260 pp., illus., bibliogr. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2018. £38.50 (paper)

  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 2021-08-04

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Monacan Millennium: A Collaborative Archaeology and History of a Virginia Indian People. JEFFREY L. HANTMAN. 2018. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville. xiii + 217 pp. $29.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8139-4147-9.

  American Antiquity · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Archaeology

  Monacan Millennium: A Collaborative Archaeology and History of a Virginia Indian People. JEFFREY L. HANTMAN. 2018. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville. xiii + 217 pp. $29.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8139-4147-9. - Volume 85 Issue 3

  PublisherDOI

• Native Providence

  2020 · 14 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Geography
  PublisherDOI

• Douglas Hunter. <i>The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America’s Indigenous Past</i>. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 344 pp.; 12 halftone illustrations, 1 map, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00.

  Winterthur Portfolio · 2019-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• William S. Simmons

  Anthropology News · 2019-09-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Engaging Monuments, Memories, and Archaeology

  2016-07-01 · 13 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Archaeological Histories of Urban Indians and Why They Matter

  The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology · 2016-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Memorializing the Narragansett: Placemaking and Memory Keeping in the Aftermath of Detribalization

  2016-07-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  On August 30, 1883, a large crowd of Rhode Island’s civic and social leaders, including the governor and members of the congressional delegation, local townspeople, and some Narragansett, gathered at the ruins of an “old Indian fort” to dedicate a monument. At the center of the fort-associated with Ninigret, a seventeenth-century political leader or sachem of the Eastern Niantic, a group closely related to the Narragansett-stood the monument, a massive granite boulder. Carved into the side of the rock facing south toward one of the largest salt water ponds in southern New England was the inscription “Fort Ninigret, Memorial of the Narragansett and Niantic Indians, The Unwavering Friends and Allies of Our Fathers.” Beneath these words were the names of the commissioners on the Affairs of the Narragansett Indians, who supervised the installation of the monument and presided over Rhode Island’s detribalization of the Narragansett. When the dedication exercises were over and the invited guests had feasted, some went sailing on the Great Salt Pond; others visited Coronation Rock, where one of the last hereditary Narragansett sachems had been crowned a little more than a century earlier (Providence Daily Journal 1883).

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond Squanto and the Pilgrims

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2014-10-02

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Recent historical archaeological research in New England has questioned colonialism’s narratives about entanglements between Native Americans and Europeans. Drawing on approaches that situate colonial relations in diachronic perspectives, landscapes, and cultural and social pluralism, and theories of agency, daily practice, memory, identity, and postcolonialism, researchers have explored interconnected histories that are more complicated and enduring. This chapter discusses the recovery of these complexities envisioned by critical studies of historical archaeological evidence, and increasingly through collaborations with indigenous groups to challenge assumptions about when, where, how, and why the experiences of natives and colonizers intersected. Examples from ancestral places to the colonized landscape’s plantations, reservations, diasporic enclaves, and urban homelands reveal the region’s Indians on different stages and in different roles from those scripted for them and subvert overly simplistic expectations about their shared histories with colonizers to amend colonialism’s injustices.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• William A. Stokinger

  3 shared

• Charles L. Redman

  3 shared

• Lawrence E. Babits

  2 shared

• Ronald D. Anzalone

  2 shared

• Joan M. Gallagher

  2 shared

• Nancy B. Muir

  University of Colorado Denver

  2 shared

• Jill Lepore

  2 shared

• Peter F. Thorbahn

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology

  Brown University

• M.A., Anthropology

  Brown University

• B.A., Anthropology

  Brown University