The Archaeology of Education: From Pedagogy to Practice

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin C. Nance. Samuel D. Smith.

In 1911 Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee Institute, met with Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears, Roebuck, and Company, to discuss building schools for African-American children in the American South.  From 1912 to 1932 the Rosenwald program helped fund more than 5,300 schools, shops, and teachers’ homes.  The Tennessee Division of Archaeology is currently conducting a survey to locate and record the sites of Tennessee’s 354 schools, 10 shops, and 9 teachers’ homes.  The project...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dana Isabell Grutesen. Sarah E. Meister.

Founded in 1827, Lindenwood University was one of the few all-girl colleges of its time and was located on the American Frontier in St. Charles, Missouri. A student-led project on campus is currently analyzing artifacts from an excavation of what is believed to be a trash dump containing items from students and faculty dating back to the mid-19th century. Gendered artifacts, such as cold cream jars, are heavily represented and are a focal point of the project. Using these and other artifacts,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandie Dielissen.

As part of the project of colonialism in North America, churches and missionaries introduced their standards of childhood through the education of Aboriginal peoples. Indian residential schools determined what it meant for Aboriginal girls to become proper women. Western ideals of femininity, modelled behaviour, appearance and clothing, personal possessions, and household goods informed respectability, and Aboriginal girls were taught a Christian home life geared towards removing them from their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Bender.

Agency as reflected in the archeological record is a well-studied and disputed theme among archeologists.  Broad generalizations arise from these conversations resulting in an over-simplification of the conditions under which the record was created.  It is easy to paint the narrative that emerges in black and white terms.  Life in the United States was rarely that simple during the Indian boarding school area.  Oral histories show that employees and students alike had mixed feelings about their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew R Beaupre.

With the increasing concentration in American archaeology on public education and outreach, archeologists are being asked to adapt educational programs to a number of different audiences. Perhaps the most critical of these is the middle schooler. Trapped between the basic skill development of primary school and the content heavy standards of high school, the contentious liminality of middle level education is combined with the turbulent years of adolescence to create an audience starved for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie J Devine. Delfin A Weis.

The archaeology of childhood has developed over the past two decades, however the full depth of this field of study has not been explored. Prior to the late 1800s, over half the population of the United States was under the age of 20. Toys and artifacts associated with children are often overlooked and marginalized in the archaeological record. It is through children that culture is taught, altered, and created. Childhood is a period of time when personhood is malleable and can be influenced....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynne Goldstein.

This paper examines sustainability and public archaeology from several perspectives. The focus is the Michigan State University (MSU) Campus Archaeology Program (CAP). One major focus of my work has been establishing mechanisms to ensure that the program continues. Another challenge has been crafting ways to ensure knowledge about and participation in what we do. On a university campus, people come and go yearly, and within four years, your wonderful excavation or program will be part of the...