The MSU Campus Archaeology Program: Community Engagement, Community Education

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Notes on slide 1

First, just to get an idea, how about a quick show of hands: who knows what the Campus Archaeology Program is?

Evolved out of 2005 excavations at Saints’ Rest, MSU’s first dormitory on campus.

This showed MSU that not only did we have important, iconic, symbolic structures on our campus above ground....

but below ground as well.

This led to the development of the Campus Archaeology Program. Made of two people...we are called in to review any construction project, to make sure that archaeologically sensitive areas will not be harmed. Mostly, this work is for historical sites.

I am going to focus on the third goal of CAP, to engage and educate the MSU community about archaeology and their cultural heritage.

MSU’s community is unique, as the people who have a stake in its cultural heritage are everywhere: there is the community that is here and is not leaving, such as faculty, staff, administration, and then there is the community that is coming and going, mainly the students and alumni. Students tend to have a commitment to MSU that is constrained by time: 4-5 years, then out. Alumni have a different relationship with their alma mater then when they were students: They are typically interested in issues of tradition, and how the school is viewed on a larger scale, much in the same way that faculty and staff are also concerned about the university.

students...both graduate and undergraduate.

This includes everyone from support services to physical plant to landscaping to res life to student life, and so on. Lots of people.

Students’ relationship with MSU’s heritage is at a small scope: how do I get what I need out MSU to do the next thing with my life and career?

Faculty, Administration, Staff, and Alumni are concerned with issues of a broader scope: how is MSU perceived nationally and internationally? What sort of reputation do we have academically, socially, politically? What sort of message do we want to send to future, current, and former MSU students about our University? Both viewpoints are critical to MSU’s cultural heritage: The broad viewpoint brings students in (Why did you come to MSU? Because of their tradition, their academics, because my mother went here, etc.), the type of education they are given is based on cultural tradition and the heritage of MSU (agricultural college = hands on education, residential education, “land grant” to “world grant”), eventually current students become alumni, and want to maintain the type of education they received when they left.

I’m going to talk about a couple of things we’re doing to inform the community about its cultural heritage, and to engage them in the process of developing their own cultural heritage.

teaching the public about what we do and what we discover. Can take form in site visits, lectures, internships, workshops, museum exhibits, and so on.

In the field.

grads and undergrads are involved in field work. Some of you have been out with us, I know.

This is my fifth talk in six months about Campus Archaeology, and it certainly won’t be the last. Talks include things to classes, campus groups, community groups, and at academic conferences. These allow for an opportunity to share what we have learned. This is a great way for us to educate the community about their cultural heritage.

This past year we started an undergraduate internship. It was influenced by two undergraduates who worked with us last spring and summer. Nate Sanders was an honors student who worked with me in the archives getting ready for a project, and Beth Pruitt worked with us this summer. This spring, Beth Vellikey has been our intern,and we are currently looking for a summer and fall intern. Interns participate in all the aforementioned aspects of education: they participate in the field, they work on a specific project and present on it at the Undergraduate Research Forum, and put together an online exhibit about the project, among other things such as conducting lab analysis, historical research, and monitoring construction projects.

Engagement is the involvement of the community in the process of discovering, researching, and educating. This also comes in a variety of ways:

Answering this question will allow us to break down the issues of access, control, and power that are a part of the dissemination of historical research.

Obviously, all the aforementioned methods of educating are also ways of engaging the community. Most of them only deal with the finish product. However, many times when we are actually out in the field, such as talking with construction workers, more insight can be gained regarding things they have found, or stories they have about their past experiences on campus.

The best way for us to reach and maintain relationships with a community that is in so many different places at once is through the internet. Our website is a portal for most of the things that we do, and where we hope for much of our engagement to occur. The major place for this is our blog, which I can show you right now. Update people about upcoming projects, so if they have info about them, they can let us know.

We are also using three social networking sites to try to engage the community in what we do.

flickr will house not only photos of people digging, but also artifact photos and photos of excavation units. This will allow the public to visit, provide info or interpretations about the info in the photos, and be part of the process of analysis from their armchair, so to speak.

we have a facebook group, which is used to communicate about different programs, projects, blog posts, online exhibits, etc. Since facebook’s primary demographic is MSU students, this space will be used to let them know what is going on regularly.

Twitter allows for the minute by minute inclusion of what we are doing in the field, lab, or archive. For starters, does everyone here know what Twitter is, and how it works?

Twitter asks the question, “what are you doing?” and gives 140 characters to tell people. It shows up in a

At each place we excavate, typically a building is being put up in its place or at least nearby. The site of Faculty Row is currently where the West Circle Dormitories are; we would like to put up a display in one of the dorms discussing the former uses of the Dorm, and the discoveries from archaeology. This would work in conjunction with other departments, such as the University Archives and the Museum.

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The MSU Campus Archaeology Program: Community Engagement, Community Education - Presentation Transcript

The MSU Campus Archaeology Program: Community Engagement, Community Education Terry Brock Graduate Student Campus Archaeologist April 13th, ’09 Anthropology Club
Show of Hands...
Saints’ Rest
Campus Archaeology Program
Big Holes
Faculty Row
tiny holes
Saints’ Rest, again
act as a good steward towards MSU’s 1. cultural resources.
act as a good steward towards MSU’s 1. cultural resources. Work w/ a wide variety of campus 2. departments.
act as a good steward towards MSU’s 1. cultural resources. Work w/ a wide variety of campus 2. departments. Engage and Educate the MSU 3. Community about archaeology and their cultural heritage.
Engage and Educate the MSU Community about archaeology and their cultural heritage.
Who is in the MSU Community?
Unique: stagnant and transient
Students
Faculty
Administration
Alumni
Staff
What is MSU’s relationship with its Cultural Heritage?
MSU’s cultural heritage faculty, incoming administration, alumni students staff current students
Some things we’re doing....
Where does community education happen?
How do you Educate? Many Contexts for Education
Did just have good Convo w construction worker re archaeology! @brockter - 2:58pm April 10, 2009
Experiential Education
Public lectures
Online Exhibits
Undergraduate Internships
What is community engagement?
“History belongs...to those who have access to its material remnants, to those who control its penning, and to those who possess the power and authority to disseminate it” - Maria Franklin, 1997: “Power to the People”: Sociopolitics and the Archaeology of Black Americans
How do we develop a transparent method of recovery, research, analysis, and presentation?
Education
http://campusarch.msu.edu
MSU Campus Archaeologist
MSU Campus Archaeology Program
brockter #capmsu
Expanding a STP to investigate the animal bone found at the bottom of the stp #capmsu - @brockter April 11, 2009 12:11 pm
The bone. Probably Cow. It is a cut rib bone, sadly, it is completely out of context. Done for the day! #capmsu - @brockter April 11, 2009 12:11 pm
Some ideas for the future...
Signpost project
Ethnography and Oral History
end.