Career[edit]

Starna and fellow archeologist Dean R. Snow conducted an extended project beginning in 1982 involving archeological excavations along the Mohawk Valley and its river, referred to as the Mohawk Valley Project. The project was conceived in 1980 during discussions between Starna and Snow. Starna, who grew up among the modern indigenous inhabitants and who introduced Snow to the valley, provided valuable archeological assistance to Snow during the first two projects, proving crucial to the project's long-term success, which lasted thirteen years. By 1989 Starna and Snow developed methods by which enabled them to determine Mohawk Indian population size for any specific year with "unexpected accuracy".^[4]


Other fields Starna has studied and written about include Epistemology, i.e.the relationship between existing knowledge and philosophy, and the models used in this field, while asserting that there is no general consensus on what constitutes a model, as their application is greatly varied, maintaining that it is best to describe models in terms of their function.^[5] Starna has written several technical reports on Native American history and culture for Indian tribes, universities and museums. In 1986 he received a Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government Senior Fellowship award to assist him in the effort in studying Iroquois land claims in upstate New York^[6] involving the allegedly illegal transfer of much of Iroquois land that occurred between the 1760s and the 1840s.^[7]


In 2014 Starna noted various errors in New York State Education Department's (YNSED) Social Studies Framework and their Toolkit Development Project, involving interpretations and facts about colonial and American Indian history. In February the next year Starna met with a NYSED staff member to discuss the various discrepancies, following with an extended email correspondence. At first there was cooperation between NYSED and Starna, however, according to Starna, indifferences emerged, where he later wondered if there were political factors influencing their discussions and lack of cooperation. Starna concluded that, "Neither the state's teachers nor its students are well served by such an inattentive approach to education, Common Core Standards not withstanding".^[2]


On April 19, 2018, Starna delivered a lecture at the Jacob Leisler Institute, in Hudson, New York, on the Iroquoian and Algonquian Indian nations of Eastern North America with focus on their culture and society.^[8] Starna has also conducted lectures, and held adjunct appointments at the State University on New York at Albany, Binghamton University, and Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario.^[9]


Starna was elected vice president of the board of trustees of the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History in 2020.^[10] He is a Fellow of the New York Academy of History and serves on the board of the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History. He was a consultant with the Native American Rights Fund.^[3]