Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
Well, the semester is finally done, and we’re wrapping up our projects from the year. Here are updates from two of our graduate researchers on what they’ve accomplished! Amy: During the fall semester, I continued to research sustainability on the historic campus. I tried to pick …
With the semester coming to a close, it is time, sadly, to write my last blog. All semester I’ve been working long and hard, looking up information to share about the women who attended M.A.C. in the early 1900s. With some help from the wonderful …
As a first year graduate student, I was not familiar with MSU’s historic campus. Over this past semester, through Campus Archaeology, I have learned about the the significance of certain buildings and history making moments of MSU’s journey. Because it is such a large campus with a plethora of resources and opportunities, you must take it upon yourself to broaden your horizons and experience all that MSU has to offer. As previous CAP intern Eve Avdoulos has noted, the spaces on campus have different meanings for various individuals depending on your major, involvements, and where you happen to spend much of your time. For those that live in the dormitories, campus is home. For those who are involved with sports, campus is a place of potential victory. For many, it is the space of opportunity and growth.
Anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot has argued that history is written largely based on physical remains. Historical buildings like those on our campus “embody the ambiguities of history. They give us the power to touch it, but not that to hold it firmly in our hands… no revelation may fully dissipate their silences” (Trouillot 1995: 30). This brings to mind the many buildings that have disappeared on our campus; the buildings that have fallen over, burned down, or have been removed because of construction or changing facility. Without the physical remains of these buildings, their full significance has perhaps been lost to the very fluid process of writing history. Indeed, some of our most cherished buildings are the oldest. Looking back in the archives and publications about the history of our campus is not just evaluating chronological data about the erecting and falling of buildings, but the significance that these buildings provided for the students who utilized them. The more we can discover about what these buildings meant to the students, the more our current understandings of and interactions with history change.
Because so many monuments have disappeared physically, Campus Archaeology Program does more than just preserve artifacts. The very writing of history and how students, staff, faculty, and alumni understand our legacy and our future is entwined in the understanding of what certain buildings meant to our evolving campus. As I read scrapbooks, catalogues, yearbooks, and map legends, the importance of certain spaces on campus shined through. I understood that how students valued various buildings reflects how they interacted with their world and with each other. It could be argued that students’ very identities were constructed by their interactions with their environment, which was largely the buildings and landscape of our campus.
As I move forward with my research, I will be evaluating several questions. What is the function of the center of campus, and what might it mean if, as Eve asserted, there is no longer a center of campus? Would our campus benefit from a common idea of a heart of campus? Can a collective student identity be attained or measured, or is that even a desire? What do elements like gender, war, expansion, reputation, curriculum, and leadership have to contribute to the change of campus and thus identity?
From a more theoretical perspective, what does place even mean? Is it just the physical environment or is there more to it? How does the river, farmland, and green space negotiate with buildings, demographics, and the larger society to construct the heart of campus and the identity of its inhabitants?
I look forward to grappling with these questions and offering my analysis as I continue to learn more about the changing heart of campus.
Author: Sabrina
We’ve found some interesting artifacts on campus, some of which can be a little difficult to identify, and others that are a little bit weird. There are random chunks of metal, bent and rusted until identification is impossible. Old bottles that have lost their labels …
A site for a new courthouse to be built adjacent to Fredericksburg City Hall in Virginia has revealed a brick structure that was involved in the Battle of Fredericksburg in December of 1862. The city funded the archaeological dig before the $35 million project begins. …
After several months, I have finally worked my way through the materials cataloged by the last MSU Historian, Madison Kuhn. Archiving everything from handwritten accounts of clearing the forest for the first college buildings to pamphlets announcing carnivals and balls on campus, Kuhn amassed an impressive and wide-ranging collection of historical documents. Many of these are applicable to the goals of CAP insofar as they “fill out” what we know of a particular period by allowing us to read not only the history reported by the university, but also the history reported by the students in their own words. We can articulate the information in these documents with the archaeological material we find through CAP excavations in order to create a more detailed picture of the campus past.
I have spent the last several weeks at the Archives reading about the university response to World War II. We know that the nation united in the war effort during this time, but we can also understand the university response at a finer scale through newspaper clippings and Board of Trustees notes, in addition to the material remains of the past excavated by CAP. I was surprised to discover just how strongly MSU responded to the national call for war time rationing and training. A pamphlet from the late 1940s references the Quonset huts set up to receive young men coming back from war. Because enrollment spiked after the war, there were multiple temporary housing locations constructed for the influx of students. A housing pamphlet printed in 1947 and given to prospective students describes the temporary housing at Red Cedar Village, which consisted of two housing units fabricated from converted metal hospital units. Students were even allowed to room in the Jenison Field House to accommodate the post-war attendance boom.
During the war, MSU students and faculty worked cooperatively toward a common goal. The academic response can be measured by the Department of Publications statement to The Detroit Times in 1943 regarding the new direction of the college. By this time, every discipline had been streamlined to reflect the war effort and all students were encouraged to pursue only those physical and academic endeavors that were in line with the goals of the nation. Every physical activity not deemed to contribute to the military training and endurance skills of young men was dispensed with, and the Home Economics department shifted their focus to preparing young women to manage large industrial cafeterias rather than the home. The Agriculture and Horticulture departments adjusted curriculum to reflect a growing focus on efficiency. Soils were researched to determine which produced highest yield crops, innovations in dehydration and canning were pursued, and even the students in the Animal Husbandry department were instructed to experiment with sheep in order to produce higher quality wool for uniforms and catgut for surgical needs. The official statement from the Department of Publications reads as follows, “Whether it be in the classroom or experimental laboratory every project of research, instruction, and extension is evaluated on the basis of its contribution towards victory.” With this information in mind, I plan to explore the ways in which the campus community practiced and maintained sustainability measures during the war. Working with CAP fellows who are familiar with the variety of materials excavated over the years, I expect that we will be able to produce a more sophisticated picture of the faculty and student wartime response using archaeology.
Author: Amy Michael
While I’ve been visiting the archives a couple of times a week, looking for information I can use for my research project, I’ve also been down in the CAP lab with Blair, putting together a type collection that can be used for future CAP members, …
Over the past few weeks, I have continued to read through the documents collected by former university historian Madison Kuhn. While my project focuses specifically on articulating historical documents detailing food and transportation with archaeological materials, I have found items in the Archives collection that …
About three weeks ago we learned that MSU Landscaping was going to be re-doing the sidewalks above Saints’ Rest, the first dormitory on campus. While we’ve had a number of excavations near this area, we never got the opportunity to see what was underneath these areas. Now they are finally removing the concrete in order to redo them, and we have a week’s worth of access to this historic site. The sidewalks being removed go right through the middle of the now demolished building, and will yield important information on the site as well as fill in the gaps we currently have. Since we learned about this, I’ve been doing research to acquaint myself with Saints’ Rest and come up with an excavation plan. My first goal was to find a good map of the 2005 excavation so that I could begin the planning. It was here that I ran into problems.
We use a system called MUNSYS to produce our campus maps for excavations. This handy tool is used by MSU’s Physical Plant and Landscaping. It shows all of the sidewalks, streets, buildings (current and razed), and most importantly the utilities that are underground. I printed off a MUNSYS map of the area so that I’d have an idea of potential electrical wires or sewer lines that we may run into. Under the suggestion of Terry Brock, the first campus archaeologist who worked on all the Saints’ Rest digs, I went to the excavation reports for Saints’ Rest. These included the book “Beneath the Ivory Tower: Archaeology of Academia” edited by Skowronek and Lewis, and a masters dissertation by Mustonen on that first 2005 excavation. Both had detailed maps showing the location of Saints’ Rest and the excavation units. This is when I hit a snag. The map for Saints’ Rest didn’t match my current map. Even with the help of Terry we couldn’t figure out how to match them up. We tried matching up the sidewalks from the 2005 dig to the modern map of sidewalks with no luck.
I looked up photos and maps from the first dig, hoping that a different drawing or different map would bring a new perspective that would solve the discrepancy. That’s when I found an earlier version of the Campus Archaeology website with some reports of the first digs we completed as a program. One of them was the Saints’ Rest 2008 project that involved some test units being opened prior to the planting of new trees.
The report has a number of maps, one from Landscaping and one from Google. Comparing these with my current map shows something very clearly: they’ve changed the sidewalks in this area since 2008. The configuration present in the 2005 and 2008 digs is completely different from my 2012 map. By matching these three together, I was finally able to figure out where the building is and start planning the dig in more detail. I also found that the configuration of Saints’ Rest in MUNSYS is not the actual configuration of the razed foundations.
Now that I’ve solved that little mystery we can move forward. Check back next week to learn more about this dig and follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get live updates!
Author: Katy Meyers Emery
This year I am continuing work on the sustainability project that former CAP graduate research fellow Jennifer Bengtson and I worked on for the past two semesters. Michigan State University has a long history of sustainable practices, especially with regard to food, transportation, and energy. …