University of Idaho students and Moscow community members dug up campus this summer and uncovered history underneath university ground through the UI Campus Archaeology Project.
“Historical archaeology deals with the leftovers of everyday life,” said Mark Warner, sociology and anthropology department chairman. “On some levels, it’s very mundane, but on another level that tells you about the world that people lived in (it) in ways that history books don’t record.”
Warner was the project director, but said the project was almost entirely student-run. He said it was practical to have students take the lead on the project because it was during summer break and other available faculty members were scarce.
Warner said it was a hands-on learning opportunity for students and exposed participants to the field of archaeology.
“In archaeology you learn about artifacts, you learn about how to make sense of the past,” he said. “You can do some of that through books, but you don’t really understand how to record the data and how to get the data until you actually do it.”
Molly Swords, a Ph.D. student in historical archaeology, was the associate director of the project. She said this wasn’t her first archaeology project, but it was different from her other projects because it was community oriented. Swords said the UI affiliated participants saw over 1,000 volunteers in the project’s duration — ranging from high school students to community members who were interested.
“Some visitors came and stayed for a long time, some visitors came and stayed for 10 minutes,” Swords said. “But at least it’s getting the word out there about archaeology and what you can learn.”
Warner said the methods used in archaeology projects usually stay the same, but what was different about this project was its location. The project took place right outside Phinney Hall, where the department of sociology and anthropology is located. Warner said not only was the location convenient, it was also unusual, because the majority of archaeology projects take place in areas much more rural than a university campus.
According to Swords, most of the artifacts found in the project came in fragments. In their case, they found many fragments, which indicated a presence of life on campus in the span of the last 125 years.
“We found evidence of buildings, which we knew the Navy ROTC classroom building was there,” she said. “It was there from 1941 to 2011, when it burnt down, so we knew that we would find a lot from that time period, and we did.”
Swords said she hoped to find more evidence of pre-1900s Moscow life during the project, but unfortunately found nothing of the sort.
Warner said in archaeology, the single artifacts one finds in a project like this aren’t nearly as important as the picture the assortment of artifacts paint by the end. He said he considers the project to be a success, overall.
“One of the things about archaeology is it’s not usually one item that tells the story,” he said. “It’s the constellation of items that you find that tell a history.”
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected]