Making History Personal: Community-Focused Archaeology in the Nevada City Cemetery, Nevada City, Montana

Summary

The small cemetery overlooking Nevada City, Montana, holds this history of the town in a unique and personal way. To the nearby descendants, the cemetery symbolizes the continuity of family, community and history. In August, 2014, Extreme History partnered with Project Archaeology to map and assess the cemetery as part of a Teacher Workshop. The project revealed the value of the personal community connection to sacred places. By working with descendant members of the community, we were able to assess the needs of the historic 1864 cemetery, then provide manpower with teachers attending the Project Archaeology workshop. The work will continue with the Montana Site Stewardship program, subsequent Project Archaeology Workshops and additional Extreme History volunteer hours. Developing the community relationship was crucial to the relevance of the project which will ultimately give back to the community accurate, digitized records of the cemetery for future use. These Records will help support efforts for future maintenance and preservation needs. Continued plans for the project include a community presentation and volunteer day as well as a possible website telling the story of the cemetery and its people. Community-focused archeological projects such as this validate and support community identity by honoring its history.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage