Unearthing Difficult Histories: The Delicate Balance of Public, Community, and Campus Archaeology in West Philadelphia's Black Bottom

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper discusses the conception, implementation, and ongoing results of Heritage West, an archaeology project co-developed by academic archaeologists at the University of Pennsylvania and community stakeholders. Heritage West delves into the intertwined narratives of migration and urban renewal in the Black Bottom—a historically Black neighborhood razed in the 1960s by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority to facilitate the expansion of UPenn and Drexel. This project is simultaneously an attempt to mobilize community archaeology to assist former Black Bottom residents and their descendants’ objectives of preserving their history, a public initiative to highlight the role of archaeology for understanding the recent past in an urban context, and a campus project entailing an undergraduate field school during the fall 2023 semester. Our discussion explores the challenges and intricacies of such multitiered engagement, showcasing how a synergy of community interaction, oral history, and urban archaeology can illuminate the everyday lived experiences of Black Bottom residents between 1850 and 1960.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41600.0