Stories of SWCA: Suanna Crowley

Behind every project at SWCA are people with unique stories.

Stories of SWCA is a monthly series highlighting the people behind our work. Each feature explores an employee’s background and career journey—what brought them to SWCA, what drives them, and how their work contributes to our mission and impact.

Archaeologist, entrepreneur, and science communications professional, Suanna Selby Crowley, PhD, RPA is a lead archaeologist and geoarchaeologist in SWCA’s Amherst office, where she’s helping grow the region’s archaeology team.

Let’s meet Suanna.

The Early Years of an Archaeologist

Suanna participates in Preservation Action Day on Capitol Hill, advocating to protect historic resources.

Suanna Crowley was only 15 when announced to her parents that she would “most certainly be an archaeologist.” She had just returned from an archaeological field program in the Four Corners Region hosted by Northern Arizona University.

“So, when I went to Phoenix last March to participate in SWCA’s LEAP Program and dashed around to see some of the places I had visited as a 15-year-old, I really felt like things had come full circle,” Suanna says.

Ultimately, Suanna traces her interest in archaeology back to growing up in Washington D.C. “I encountered people from all over the world, and I got curious about how other people lived. Archaeology allowed me to cultivate that curiosity.”

Career Path

Suanna conducts geoarchaeological analysis on site in Middleborough, Massachusetts.

Despite her early resolve, Suanna has enjoyed a varied career. She cut her teeth learning how to do shovel test pits, survey design work, and report writing during her undergraduate education. In graduate school, she worked at a boutique geoarchaeology and Cultural Resources Management (CRM) firm. It was during this time that she developed an intense interest in geomorphology, the idea of “soil as artifact,” and questions about how soils reflect environmental and human histories.

This is also when Suanna’s family nicknamed her “Dr. Dirt.”

After taking some time to raise a family, Suanna later opened her own CRM firm, where she focused on geoarchaeology, science fundraising and advocacy, and science communications. As part of this work, she developed the social media outreach plan for the Event Horizon Telescope, an international effort that used multiple ground-based radio telescopes to capture an image of a black hole for the first time. Her social media posts reached 4.5 billion people.

Joining a Fabulous Band of Ologists at SWCA

After working on her own for several years, a friend suggested that Suanna look into SWCA. She found that she was drawn to the scale and complexity of the problems the firm was tackling. “I was invited to join this fabulous band of ‘ologists’ in solving these wicked problems,” Suanna says, “so I made the leap.”

“I love my role in building our team of archaeologists and managing some really complex projects, whether that’s working with the GIS team to help states protect archaeological resources within their parks or using ground-penetrating radar to safeguard burial sites within a federal cemetery.”

Suanna gives a keynote address at the University of Maine Orono Graduate Student Symposium

What Employee Ownership Means to Suanna

“As an entrepreneur, I prioritized ownership, because it gives you the ability to set the firm’s direction and share its benefits. Being an employee/owner inside SWCA, you see that scaled up. People are invested in what they’re doing, and they make choices with a sense of ownership and determination,” Suanna says. “I think SWCA is distinctive in delivering leading edge science and services with this model.”