Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
This academic year has allowed me to explore several digital methods I had little to no knowledge about. This is partially due to my teaching position at MSU in the Lab for the Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR). While in this position, I …
During archaeological excavations, some of the most ubiquitous artifacts unearthed are ceramic sherds that were once part of bowls, plates, vases, or other decorative pieces. It is relatively easy to appreciate the skills and techniques that go into the creation of meticulously crafted ceramic vessels. …
When COVID hit our campus, CAP was forced to rethink how we perform our community outreach. We needed new, innovative ways to engage and educate the public without requiring them to meet in large groups. One of the ways we did this was to transition our outreach to digital platforms. This led us to create a series of tours about MSU’s history through the archaeology and archives.
CAP is working with the Geocaching Adventure Lab smart phone application to create seasonal adventures around MSU campus based on different themes. Each tour will have 5 stops for explorers to visit and learn interesting facts about each location, as well as about any excavations CAP has performed at that site. Our first adventure tour, entitled Walking Through MSU’s Culinary Past, is being released today! This tour teaches explorers about the history of MSU’s foodways, including various aspects of food production and consumption.
The walking tour comprises five stops, including the Old East Lansing Dump, Beal’s Lab, the West Circle Privy, the Gunson home, and the MSU Dairy Store. Each stop has a georeferenced location allowing the Adventure Lab app to map users to each stop. You can visit the Old East Lansing Dump to learn about how campus residents consumed alcohol during prohibition or community dinners that took place at Gunson’s house.
When approaching each location, explorers will be presented with a brief history of the site followed by the archaeological connection. We describe any excavations that took place at the site, as well as the artifacts recovered and their significance to MSU’s culinary past. Explorers will also be presented with archived photographs of the site, such as the historic Gunson home and Diary Store, and images of the excavation and artifacts. Additionally, we included 3D models of notable artifacts associated with each location.
The tour will end at the MSU Dairy store where explorers can partake in MSU’s cuisine by stopping in to get a delicious ice cream! All of the stops are easily accessible from sidewalks and do not require locating any tangible objects away from the sidewalks. Explorers will simply navigate to the location and explore the digital resources from their phones!
Access our tour directly though the QR code linked here or search for the tour on the Geocaching Adventure Lab app! We hope this will be a good way for students, alumni, and local alike to get outside safely and learn about the work we do around campus. Please feel free to suggest tours you would like to see in the future! Have fun exploring Spartans!
Here at Campus Archaeology, we love outreach – just this past week, we presented at both Michigan Archaeology Day and at our annual Apparitions and Archaeology Tour! (Thank you to those who stopped by!) We love outreach so much because we are passionate about archaeology …
Greetings! For those of you just joining our blog for the first time, I am Dr. Camp, the Director of the MSU Campus Archaeology Program (CAP). I am entering my 5th year here at MSU, and my 13th teaching as a tenure track faculty member …
Campus Archaeology (CAP) has always been heavily centered around community engagement. We have several standing outreach events that we participate in every year, such as our annual Apparitions and Archaeology Haunted Campus Tour, Grandparents University, various public-school events, and Archaeology Day at the Michigan History Museum. During COVID, we have been forced to rethink the ways in which we engage with the community to teach the community about what we do as archaeologists, the history of Michigan State University, and CAP.
Now that snow is melting in Michigan and we are seeing signs of warmer days in the near future, we are taking our outreach outside! The limited access to our favorite local businesses due to COVID mandates encourages more people to spend time outside and finding new ways to explore the area. This led us to work on a new project where members of the community could learn about MSU history and past CAP projects through geocaching!
Geocaching is advertised as “the world’s largest treasure hunt”. It is a recreational activity that takes you on a pedestrian tour of your own city (or wherever you choose to explore!) by locating GPS points using the Geocaching application on your phone. A geocache is a physical container hidden outside by members of the community and assigned a GPS coordinate with descriptions and details to help users find the geocache. Each geocache has information provided on the level of difficulty, the terrain, and size of the container. The idea is that when the geocache is located, the user will take an item from the container and leave a new item in place of the one they collected. Geocaching is a great way to get outside and be active, see and experience new things, and even teach children navigation skills! Not to mention…this is a great activity that can be done while maintaining social distancing! If you do not want to meet up with friends or family during the pandemic, you can challenge others to complete the same routes and leave items for them to find.
The Geocaching app has a sister app, Adventure Lab, where users create stories or themed tours through GPS locations of physical landmarks. For example, you can find adventures of murals around Lansing and headstone symbolism in Mt. Hope Cemetery. Campus Archaeology will use Adventure Lab to create several themed informative tours based on research and past projects conducted by our organization, such as several histories of MSU campus including BIPOC on MSU campus, women’s history, children on historic campus, stories of buildings that have burned down across campus, science and laboratories, and food ways. We will also create chronological tours of archaeology across campus as well as tours of past field schools hosted by Campus Archaeology. Finally, we will have an adventure for our famous Apparitions and Archaeology Haunted Campus Tour.
The tours will be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act to ensure accessibility to all our geocache locations and will have a combination of physical landmarks and containers. At each stop, users will be able to read interesting MSU history Some stops will include QR codes to view 3D models of artifacts recovered on campus and even some CAP swag!! We will be rolling out a couple of tours in the coming months so make sure to download the Adventure Lab app and prepare to get some sunshine!
Even during a quarantine, archaeology does not stop. While we have not been able to get out into the field until recently, we at CAP have been working hard to create historical background summaries of areas that will be impacted by construction (a critical part …
To celebrate world anthropology day, the current CAP graduate fellows wanted to share how they became interested in anthropology, and some current or favorite projects they are involved in! Grace: As a first-year PhD student moving to a new state and school, I initially came …
Last Tuesday, November 12, 2019, Campus Archaeology hosted their first Open House. For two hours, Campus Archaeology opened our lab doors to the public. Campus Archaeology strives to have a standing relationship with the community through our numerous outreach events each year, as well as our public service to Michigan State University. We frequently engage with the public to educate people in all walks of life on what it means to be an archaeologist. At these outreach events, people get to see examples of what we do in the field and some of the artifacts that have been recovered from MSU’s campus, but people never really get to see what we do on a daily basis.
The work that takes place in the Campus Archaeology Laboratory represents a typical day as an archaeologist: artifact cataloguing and analysis, research, and training students. Most people correlate archaeologists with fieldwork, but the majority of our work is focused on analyzing and interpreting the data collected from our fieldwork. Thus, Campus Archaeology wanted to provide an opportunity for the public to see behind-the-scenes of an archaeology lab through the Open House.
Our visitors ranged from MSU faculty and staff to high school students interested in a career in archaeology. During the Open House, guests were presented with a range of artifacts recovered from MSU’s campus, posters from conferences demonstrating current research in our lab, examples of our outreach activities to show how we engage with the public, digital and printed 3D models of artifacts, and examples of how we catalogue and curate artifacts. Guests were also able to directly interact with current CAP fellows and interns to learn about their experiences with CAP as well as their personal research projects.
Campus Archaeology would like to thank everyone who attended the Open House event. We had a fantastic time talking with everyone and appreciate your support.
Next week is the annual Midwest Archaeological Conference (October 10-12, 2019) in Mankato, MN. Below is a list of dates and times of all MSU presentations. This includes past, present, and retired MSU graduate students and faculty. Included is a poster on the Campus Archaeology …