“A Name Comes First and the Story Follows”: Archaeology, Story Maps, and the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project

Summary

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, generated through a humanistic approach that integrates individuals with their contexts, archaeological and historical. Recent adoption of ESRI Story Maps leverages state-of-the art mapping and multimodal storytelling technology to connect the MCPFC to the greater Milwaukee community. One goal of this effort is to make transparent the archaeological and osteological methods that led to the provisional identification of four nonadults through associated “affective objects.” The Story Map promotes transparency in archaeological research by detailing both the process of making interpretations (the how we know) and the products of collaborative research (what we know). Whereas the placemaking of a sprawling regional medical campus is quite legible, the previous (and ongoing) land use as a burial site for marginalized members of Milwaukee society has remained relatively invisible. The Story Map endeavor puts narratives from the MCPFC “on the map,” creating a durable record that renders the events of the past and the research of the present legible and accessible.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• There and Back Again: Celebrating the Career and Ongoing Contributions of Patricia B. Richards   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40365.0