The Hamtramck Explorer: Mapping Community History and Archaeology in an Immigrant City

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Cities on the Move: Reflecting on Urban Archaeology in the 21st Century", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Hamtramck is a small Muslim-majority city surrounded by Detroit and defined by its century-long reputation as a welcoming home for foreign-born immigrants, who comprise over 40% of the city’s present-day population. The Hamtramck Explorer deep map is an outcome of the Hamtramck Spatial Archaeology Project, an ongoing NEH-funded collaboration between the authors, the Hamtramck Historical Museum, and community stakeholders. A tool of citizen history, the Hamtramck Explorer is an open-access and interactive digital atlas that cross-links spatial, historical, and archaeological data. Its dual purposes are to preserve historical information and facilitate storytelling about places and people associated with the city’s cultural heritage in ways that are relevant to the present population, but also inclusive of the city’s immigrant and industrial past. This presentation details the creation of the Hamtramck Explorer, the first digital deep map to integrate historical, demographic, and cartographic archives with archaeological data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cities on the Move: Reflecting on Urban Archaeology in the 21st Century   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow