Archaeology in our Backyards: A Household Chore as Antecedent to Community Awareness of Heritage at Risk.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In June of 2020, my wife and I purchased a contributing home in the Governor’s Mansion Historic District in Downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. As the pandemic shutdown dragged on through the summer and fall of 2020, my family turned our focus to transforming our yard into a more edible landscape. Artifacts recovered while planting an apple tree became a small-scale excavation enabling me to elevate some of the frustrations of a COVID bound archaeologist. When asked to present to a local preservation association, my backyard project became the impetus for a much larger discussion of downtown archaeology and the responsibility to the archaeological record that should be shouldered by owners of historic homes. This is a story of the unintended educational and outreach consequences of planting a tree.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology