In the University’s Shadow: Reflections on the First Seasons of Campus Archaeology at University of Kentucky

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "At Stake in the Quad: Archaeologies on/of Campus", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Fall 2023 marks the second season of the University of Kentucky Campus Archaeology project. The project focuses primarily on a late-19th century house and surrounding lot on the periphery of campus. The building has served as a private family home, student housing, and eventually became university office and classroom space. This project introduces students to field and laboratory methods in archaeology, and addresses questions of urbanizing southern landscapes in the post-bellum period, the displacement of Black communities in American cities at the turn of the twentieth century, and the persistent life use of the site by students from the early twentieth to twenty-first centuries. This paper offers a reflection on the pedagogical approach to a growing experiential historical archaeology program at the university, and one that specifically seeks to challenge the geographic and financial obstacles that prevent students from gaining traditional field training.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• At Stake in the Quad: Archaeologies on/of Campus

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow