Sarah Newman’s research aims to understand how environments are made and lived in, from the past to the present. She uses evidence and methods from archaeology and history to ask how people and other animals have co-existed, learned from one another, and modified the landscapes they inhabit. 

In Unmaking Waste: New Histories of Old Things, Newman explores changing ideas about what waste is and what should be done with it. The book takes a long-term, cross-cultural perspective to trace how specific understandings of trash took shape over time, as well as how those understandings affect what we think about garbage in the past and the future. This research was featured on UChicago’s Big Brains podcast: “What Our Trash Problem Says About Our Culture."

As a zooarchaeologist, Newman is interested in human and animal histories and how they intersect. Her current book project, Animal Archaeology, aims to expand archaeology to study the material traces of non-human lives. She works closely with the Museo Arqueológico de Bogotá, most recently in co-curating the award-wining exhibition SERámicAnimal. 

Newman currently directs the Topoxte Archaeological Project, which investigates ancient Maya landscape modifications in northern Guatemala. She also co-directs the Invisible Landscapes project with Felipe Rojas of Brown University and Eduardo Góes Neves of the University of São Paulo, which brings together archaeologists, anthropologists, architects, artists, and remote-sensing specialists to collaboratively analyze multi-scalar and multi-temporal anthropogenic landscapes across the globe. 

Newman is affiliated faculty with the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization, the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and the Center for Latin American Studies.