There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Patricia B. Richards has spent more than four decades immersed in the archaeology and bioarchaeology of the American Midwest. Through her field-based research into Paleoindian, postcontact, and Euro-American lifeways of the Great Lakes region, she has explored and highlighted the importance of material culture, human actors, ethnographic research, and engaged archaeology. Her work has consistently emphasized the power of archaeology to reveal the stories of those forgotten by written history, as exemplified by her creation of and long-term commitment to the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project. Her ethical approach to archaeological practice has been a constant in an ever-evolving career, serving as a touchstone of her advocacy for burial site preservation legislation in Wisconsin. She has also been an inspirational and inestimable mentor and colleague, and through the work of those she has trained and supported we see the positive imprint she has made on the discipline over the last decades. This session takes her retirement from teaching as an opportunity to recognize and honor her contributions to both archaeology of the Midwest and to archaeological pedagogy. Please join us as we share our favorite memories and present research inspired by her contributions to the field.

Other Keywords
Historic • Historical Archaeology • Mortuary Analysis • Education/Pedagogy • Digital Archaeology: GIS • Ethics • Landscape Archaeology • ancient DNA • Mortuary archaeology • Ethnohistory/History

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • Missouri (State / Territory) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • Illinois (State / Territory) • Wisconsin (State / Territory) • Indiana (State / Territory) • Michigan (State / Territory) • Nebraska (State / Territory) • Kansas (State / Territory) • Iowa (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)
Documents
  • Dr. Patricia Richards and the MCPFC Story: Narrative History and Historiography (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Richards.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper illustrates how Milwaukee County institutions' relationships with commercial, social, and religious enterprises, particularly those involving the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemeteries (MCPFC), were reflected in contemporary written accounts. Further, it examines how archaeological...

  • From Barbies to Bones: Celebrating Dr. Patricia B. Richards's Legacy (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Richards. Willa Richards. Simone Bruhy.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the daughters of archaeologists, we’ve lived on, worked at, and visited scores of archaeological sites across the Midwest. Cumulatively, we’ve been witness to nearly every decade of Patricia B. Richards’s career. Our mother’s revolutionary ability to seamlessly merge her roles of mother and...

  • In Support of a Holistic Approach to Bioarchaeology: The Distribution of Bacterial Genera by Presence of Material Culture in the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Werner.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Complicating the narrative of the traditional poor farm cemetery, the work of Patricia B. Richards has led to a more humanistic approach to interpreting archaeological data. This study presents oral microbiome data from twenty-five female individuals from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm...

  • “Interesting Characters Find Graves in the Potter’s Field”: The Value of Storytelling in Historical Bioarchaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke Drew. Chris Drew.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dr. Patricia Richards had an indelible impact on these married authors’ time as UWM doctoral candidates. Her support as the former’s dissertation advisor was unfailing, and she provided a useful anthropological perspective for the latter’s English creative writing committee. In this paper, her...

  • "Milwaukee’s Forest Home Cemetery is a Place for the Living Too”: The Reemergence of Deathscape Recreation at Forest Home Cemetery (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Zahn-Hiepler.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The original design and use of the Garden Cemetery deathscape encouraged recreation and social interaction among the living and the dead. Forest Home Cemetery, a historic (1850–present) Garden Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hosts more than a dozen events in the cemetery each year, including...

  • A Morbid Taste for Bones? Reconciling Science and Ethics in Mortuary Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Bettina Arnold.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dead bodies are a source of a range of extreme emotions in human societies past and present, from superstitious fear of the dangerous dead (burials at cross-roads in medieval Germany) to ancestor veneration and the curation and display of skeletal remains (catacombs in Portugal, Italy, and...

  • Mothers, Mentors, and Belonging in the Academy: The Unintentional Legacy of Patricia Richards (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Zejdlik.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mothers in academia occupy the intersection of two demanding worlds: the rigors of scholarly pursuits and the responsibilities of childrearing. They face systemic barriers, including gender bias, limited access to resources, and inflexible tenure-track structures. Balancing research, teaching,...

  • “A Name Comes First and the Story Follows”: Archaeology, Story Maps, and the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only B Charles. Shannon Freire.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout her career, Patricia Richards conveyed experience and knowledge through storytelling. Impassioned and insightful, these stories often reveal episodes forgotten by written history. As one example, the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC) represents thousands of stories,...

  • Stand by the Gray Stone: GIS and Spatial-Temporal Applications at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Burant.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I am immensely grateful to have had Dr. Patricia B. Richards as a professor, supervisor, and mentor throughout my academic pursuits. Her long and distinguished career has been exemplified by a fierce and unwavering focus to provide her students with the tools needed to successfully apply...

  • There Is Much Else that May Be Told: Lessons in Navigating Nontraditional Career Paths in Anthropology, Archaeology, and Beyond (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Jones. Shannon Freire. Jessica Skinner. B Charles.

    This is an abstract from the "There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout her career, Patricia B. Richards has held many prominent positions within and adjacent to conventional academic anthropology, among them senior scientist, adjunct curator, principal investigator, and associate director of an archaeological research laboratory. While these positions...