Natalie Mueller, ​an assistant professor of archaeology, is one of two recipients of the Cromwell Harbor Foundation’s inaugural Chrysalis Prize, which recognizes promising early-career scholars with $250,000 in unrestricted support, mentorship, and entry into a growing cohort of multidisciplinary thinkers.

A celebration recognizing Mueller and Dakota McCoy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, took place March 6 at the Boston Athenaeum, with a keynote address by Nobel laureate Esther Duflo.

According to the foundation, the Chrysalis Prize was created to reward imaginative, cross-disciplinary research that expands our understanding of humanity.

“The Chrysalis Prize recognizes Dr. Mueller for her ability to rigorously synthesize complex, multidisciplinary concepts. Natalie is an original scholar whose collaborative approach and innovative research drives transformative scholarship in archaeology,” said Tristram “T.R.” Kidder, the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor and a professor of anthropology.

Can ‘lost crops’ offer solutions for future agriculture?

Mueller is an archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist who specializes in the historical ecology of North America and eastern Africa, and the origins of agriculture. Mueller also explores the archaeological, technological, and ethical implications of recovering lost crops — those important, once-domesticated plants that no longer play a role in modern agriculture. 

Mueller’s research expands our understanding of how ancient civilizations produced food and how these practices shaped their social institutions. Someday, she hopes, it will also help solve existing agriculture challenges, such as changing weather patterns.

“In studying lost crops, my colleagues and I are trying to develop a holistic view of what Indigenous people were doing in the past. Today, this would be called agroforestry or ecologically informed agriculture. Instead of changing the environment to match the crops, they were selecting plants for ecosystems where it made sense for them to grow.

“For example, we’re working on a project where we’re looking at perennial wetland plants that are productive producers of food that we could potentially grow again as crops. We’re also trying to identify what kinds of management techniques are best to grow those crops.

“We hope that by generating basic information about these plants, we can interest people who would be able to scale this up for agricultural production,” Mueller said.  

According to Mueller, receiving this award was especially meaningful because it meant somebody saw what she was doing, and instead of being confused by her research, they thought it was promising and gave her the resources to continue pursuing it.

With federal research funding cuts bringing many archaeology projects to a halt, Mueller hopes to use the award money to strategically fund her projects, as well as select graduate research — whether that’s through a small endowment or mini-grants.

“Archaeology is an affordable discipline. We don’t usually need enormous amounts of money to do something interesting,” she said.

About the Cromwell Harbor Foundation

The Cromwell Harbor Foundation supports individuals and institutions with the freedom to pursue imaginative ideas and build lasting impact. CHF is a supporting foundation of the Boston Foundation and operates from its home base in the Cromwell Harbor watershed on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Learn more at cromwellharborfdn.org.

Header image: At a March 6 ceremony in Boston, Natalie Mueller was honored with the inaugural Chrysalis Prize, recognizing her innovative research on ancient agriculture and “lost crops.” (Courtesy: Mueller)