Bottom-Up Heritage Management in Ithaca, New York: Community Initiatives and Collaborations with University Archaeologists

Summary

Discovering Enfield Falls is dramatically different from academic managed heritage projects that are top-down projects initiated by archaeologists. In our project, the heritage planning originated with stakeholders who were determine to preserve the history of a community that was demolished in the early twentieth century to create a state park. This 19th century hamlet was both a commercial center for farmers and a regional scenic tourist destination. The stakeholders did not need archaeologists to help them discover their history or value Enfield Falls as a heritage site. They needed archaeologists to collaborate with them in order to reveal the cultural landscape and history buried in the park to a larger community both locally and within the northeast region of the United States and Canada. The collaboration involved students rerolled in Cornell University service-learning courses with a participatory action research focus. From 1998 to the present, archaeologists and community members have collaborated on all stages of the work, from fieldwork to museum exhibits. In our outreach, we have jointly produced permanent indoor and outdoor exhibits, an archaeological walking trail, an extensively illustrated brochure, an orientation film for the park’s museum, and two public access television films.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Managing Archaeological Heritage in the 21st Century

Keywords

Spatial Coverage