Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
Like Mari Isa, for this blog post, I will be talking about the outreach event that CAP ran for Holmes Middle School in Livonia, MI on Friday, January 19th. However, I will be discussing it from a different point of view. In Mari’s blog, she …
Given one hour, how do you teach 300 7th graders to think like archaeologists? This was the challenge presented to us when a group of teachers contacted CAP about doing an interactive event to introduce their 7th grade social studies students to archaeology. Although CAP …
Outreach isn’t something out of the ordinary for CAP to do. We routinely participate in a wide variety of outreach events ranging from small groups to hundreds of people at large events like Sciencefest.
CAP was recently contacted by a group of Middle School teachers here in Michigan and asked if we would be interested in collaborating. This district had recently changed some of the social science curriculum to include more anthropology/archaeology and study of the ancient past. The teachers asked if we would be willing to come in and conduct an event that would allow their students to interact with archaeologists and to have the opportunity for hands on engagement.
So we were faced with a few new challenges – most hands on events we’ve done in the past are geared towards elementary school students and smaller groups. This event would need to cover 300 7th graders. Thankfully we would be covering individual classes with no more than 30 students per class and a maximum of 3 classes running at once.
We decided to create a “site in a box” activity. We selected sites that would provide a wide range of time periods, site types, and locations. The students will be provided with a worksheet that asks them to identify the artifacts, consider who the people that used them were, what time frame these objects are from, and where in the world the site may be. Each site box has 10-11 artifacts, and a series of additional clues like maps or site photos.
Site A – Alameda-Stone Cemetery
The Alameda-Stone cemetery is located in Tucson, Arizona. It was used by local community members from the early 1860s through 1881.
This sites artifacts include:
The box also includes a map of the entire cemetery, a close up of an individual burial, and an artifact image.
Site B – Historic Privy on MSU’s Campus
The west circle privy was excavated in 2015. The artifacts in the structure date to the 1850s and 1860s. This is the only privy that has been located on campus.
This sites artifacts include:
Site C – Aztalan
We wanted to include a prehistoric site in the Midwest to be able to provide a local connection for the students. With Dr. Goldstein’s extensive experience at Aztalan it was an easy choice. The site of Aztalan is located in present day southern Wisconsin and was occupied between 1050 and 1200 AD.
This sites artifacts include:
Site D – Mayan Cave Burial
The cave burial site of Actun Kabul was selected for site D. Actun Kabul (Actun is the word for cave in the Mayan language) is a cave deep within the jungles of Belize in Central America.
This sites artifacts include:
We also provide the students with a map of the cave.
Site E – Professor Gunson’s Trash Pit
For our final site we selected the site the 2015 CAP field school excavated – Professor Gunson’s trash deposit.
This sites artifacts include:
Since we needed to make 15 total kits, there was no way we could include actual artifacts. The objects in the kits are a combination of online purchases, hunting at the University Surplus Store, donations from CAP fellows/faculty, and some creative saving (this week I boiled a chicken carcass for the bones, saved all of my egg shells, and picked out seeds from bell peppers). Each kit also contains an envelope with an answer key that identifies each of the artifacts, and provides a narrative of the site. The envelope also contains more details maps and photos of the archaeological site.
Today we’re putting these kits to the test! We’ll be posting throughout the day on social media, and stay tuned for a follow up post about the event later this month.
Author: Lisa Bright
Happy Halloween! This past week the Campus Archaeology Program and the MSU Paranormal Society hosted their fourth annual Apparitions and Archaeology: A Haunted Campus Tour! While it was a little chilly out, we had a record number of attendees, with over 200 people touring! Similar …
The 2017-18 academic year will be a momentous one for MSU Campus Archaeology. We are now an established entity in the University with our own budget and clear goals, but as of May 2018, I (Lynne Goldstein) will be retiring from MSU, and the MSU …
On Tuesday, May 2nd, MSU’s Department of Anthropology, Department of Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, and the Office of the President received the Michigan Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation and a special tribute from the State of Michigan Legislature on behalf of MSU Campus Archaeology. The award was given for their combined efforts to preserve the cultural resources found on Michigan State University’s campus. This award, sponsored by Michigan’s State Historic Preservation Office and State Historic Preservation Review Board, recognizes individuals, companies, and institutions that strive to protect, preserve, and study the many historic resources within the state of Michigan (For a complete list of those who received the Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation this year, click here).
Since 2005, MSU’s Campus Archaeology Program has worked to excavate and recover the material remains of MSU’s history, as well as the history of those who lived here prior to the university. Combining salvage archaeology, field schools, and archival research, CAP has contributed greatly to our understanding of MSU’s past, while also training numerous students in archaeological methods and the importance of cultural resource management and preservation. Not only focused on excavation and research, CAP also works to communicate this history and the importance of archaeology to members of the community through outreach events like MSU’s Science Festival, MSU Grandparents University, the CAP MSU Haunted Campus tour, and participation in other local events. As Governor Snyder reminds us, these preservation and research efforts have impacts beyond just the MSU community, contributing to “our sense of place, and our identity as Michiganders.”
In the future, Campus Archaeology will continue to work toward preserving and understanding the history of our small slice of the state of Michigan, despite a political climate that is increasingly antagonistic toward cultural and natural resource management and preservation. Preservation, when done properly, helps to build a stronger sense of self and identity for neighborhoods, regions, and even nations, which can act as guiding principles for future action. The preservation of buildings and archaeological sites also provides stark physical reminders of who we are, where we came from, and what we strive to become in the future. They remind us of how much we have achieved, but also how far we have left to go. Further, monuments and other preserved sites allow us to interact with and experience our heritage, or the heritage of others, in a way that cannot be reproduced through other means. Beyond this cultural and social value, preservation efforts also generate economic opportunities by creating jobs, increasing tourism, increasing property values, and attracting businesses who want to benefit from this improved traffic. Most importantly, these resources are non-renewable; they cannot be reclaimed once they are gone, so we must work to preserve them now before they are lost forever. We congratulate all of the current and previous winners of the Michigan Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation for their great work, and we hope they continue this work far into the future.
Author: Jeff Painter
This month, Campus Archaeology is participating in MSU’s fifth annual Science Festival. Science Fest celebrates STEAM fields—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics—by bringing exploration and discovery out of the laboratory and into the public eye. From April 7-23, MSU is hosting a series of free …
Last night was the first official CAP Cafe with a presentation by Dr. Jodi O’Gorman, chair of the MSU Department of Anthropology. We are excited to launch this series of public oriented lectures about some of the archaeology projects from our department and gather with archaeologists here in …
This year CAP will be introducing a new public outreach series called CAP Cafe. This will be a monthly series geared towards the general public, and it will explore all things archaeology. While Campus Archaeology regularly presents for public outreach events, such as MSU Science Festival and Grandparents University, it often ends up being for a limited audience. CAP Cafe will allow us to educate and entertain the public about the awesome world of archaeology.
The first CAP Cafe will be our second annual Apparitions and Archaeology Campus Tour, on October 29th, 7pm. This free event will give a historic tour of MSU’s campus, stopping at the most haunted locations. MSU’s Paranormal Society will join CAP for this event and test areas for any paranormal activity. Join us in this haunting experience to learn about the spooky history of MSU, the archaeology of each historic site, and maybe meet some of MSU’s historic residents, i.e. ghosts.
Because we want the CAP Cafe series to be engaging to the public, we’ll be switching up the content and format every month. Some months will be structured as a discussion on an archaeological topic and some months will be geared more towards kids with hands-on activities. Our goal is to engage the entire spectrum of the general public. While a majority of the CAP Cafe series will revolve around Campus Archaeology and our collections, we’ll also have other MSU archaeology professors and grad students present their archaeological research.
A few ideas for our upcoming CAP Cafes are:
“What we did this Summer”- Learn about CAP’s awesome discoveries on campus this summer, which include MSU’s first privy, and our excavations of Professor Gunson’s garbage.
Flint Knapping- Ever been curious about how stone tools are made? Join us for an instructional tutorial on making a projectile point.
Map Making- Every archaeologist needs to know how to create a site map. This workshop will explain the importance of maps in archaeology, show the utility of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and explain how to make a sketch map with only a compass.
Since we want the CAP Cafe series to engage the public, we want to hear from you. What specific archaeological things would you like to see, or learn about for the series? Are there areas or time periods that interest you? Do you want to know more about the archaeological process? Do you just want to meet some really cool archaeologists? Give us your comments, find us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/capmsu?ref=hl), or Tweet us @capmsu.
Author: Kate Frederick
As students begin to file out of campus, the orange cones start lining up as a sign of the upcoming summer construction projects. This will be my second summer as Campus Archaeologist and I feel much more prepared this year to expect the unexpected. We’ve …
