CAP Lab Open House

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.