Ethics In A Small Town: Columbia Street Cemetery Project In Springfield, Ohio

Caitlin Lobl; Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom

Ethics In A Small Town: Columbia Street Cemetery Project In Springfield, Ohio

Author(s): Caitlin Lobl; Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom

Year: 2020

Summary

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In Springfield, Ohio, the Columbia Street Cemetery (CSC) Project is a joint initiative by the Turner Foundation, concerned citizens of Springfield, and Wittenberg University’s History and Archaeology programs. The aim of the project is to document and study the city’s oldest cemetery, which dates to the 1820s. The cemetery sits at the center of the city’s downtown, which is part of a revitalization campaign. The initial goal of the CSC Project was to locate over fifty missing headstones and to truth-test the GPR for lost graves. It is the intention of this paper to explore the ethical issues that come into play when non-profit contractors do not necessarily take into consideration the ethical obligations of professional archaeologists in public archaeology. As director and field director, we will discuss the strategies we have used to teach both students and stakeholders about the ethical implications of the work we are undertaking.