NEW PHILADELPHIA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT:
FIELDSCHOOL IN ARCHAEOLOGY AND LABORATORY TECHNIQUES
May 27, 2008 to August 1, 2008.
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for
Undergraduates Program.
Field schhol co-directors: Anna Agbe-Davies (DePaul University), Christopher
Fennell (University of Illinois), and Terrance Martin (Illinois State Museum)
* Application Deadline: for best consideration -- March 21, 2008.
Application forms and additional information are available by following the links
for the New Philadelphia project at the University of Illinois at:
http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/NSF/fieldschool.html
Additional background information is available at:
http://www.anthro.uiuc.edu/faculty/cfennell/NP
and
http://www.heritage.umd.edu/
* Field School Objectives:
The New Philadelphia story is both compelling and unique. Many studies in
historical archaeology that concentrate on African-American issues have
focused on plantation life and the pre-emancipation era. The history of New
Philadelphia is very different. It is a chronicle of racial uplift and centering on
the success of an African-American family and their ability to survive and
prosper in a racist society. In 1836, Frank McWorter, an African American who
was born into slavery and later purchased his own freedom, acquired 42 acres
of land in the sparsely populated area of Pike County, Illinois, situated in the
rolling hills bounded by the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. He founded and
platted a town, subdivided the property, and sold lots. McWorter used the
revenues from his entrepreneurial efforts to purchase the freedom of sixteen
family members, with a total expenditure of $14,000 -- a remarkable
achievement. Families of African American and European American heritage
moved to the town and created a multi-racial community. New Philadelphia
likely served as a stopping place for the "Underground railroad" as enslaved
African Americans fled northward escaping the oppression of southern
plantations.
The history of New Philadelphia serves as a rare example of a multi-racial early
farming community on the nation's Midwestern frontier (Walker 1983). The
town's population reached its peak of about 160 people after the Civil War, a
size comparable to many Pike County communities today. However, by the end
of the century racial and corporate politics of America's gilded age resulted in
the death knell for the settlement: regional transportation investors routed a
new railroad line to pass north of the town. Many of New Philadelphia's
residents eventually moved away and, by the early 20th century, only a few
families remained (Walker 1983).
This NSF-REU sites program will help enhance undergraduate education in
scientific methods and analyses in an ongoing long-term project at New
Philadelphia. The primary goals of the project are to:
1) Understand the town's founding and development as a multi-racial
integrated town;
2) Explore and contrast dietary patterns between different households of
different ethnic backgrounds by examining faunal and botanical remains;
3) Reconstruct the townscape and town lot uses of different households from
different ethnic backgrounds using botanical data and archaeological
landscape features;
4) Elucidate the different consumer choices residents of different ethnic
backgrounds made in a frontier situation and understand how household
choices changed with the increased connection to distant markets and
changing perceptions of racialization within the society.
The excavation and analysis of artifacts and archaeobiology data will provide
students with a hands-on learning experience and mentoring process for
students in an interdisciplinary setting. Ultimately, these different data sets
will be integrated and the students will gain an understanding of the
importance of scientific interdisciplinary research as they examine the growth
and development of the town. This research will elucidate how individual
members and families of this integrated community made choices to create
their immediate environment, diet, agricultural practices, social affiliation, and
consumer choices.
* Archaeological and Research Setting:
New Philadelphia in Pike County, Illinois is situated between the Illinois and
Mississippi rivers. Today, most of the original 42 acres have been returned to
agricultural use. Only a few scattered house foundations are visible in the
plowed fields.
This archaeology project serves as an excellent opportunity for students to
participate in many aspects of a scientific research program. Students will be
divided into teams and they will work collaboratively on an assigned town lot
in New Philadelphia. Prior to excavations, each student will draw from the
broader research goals of this project to create an individual and focused
research design to be addressed in the course of their field school experience.
The field school instructors will teach students about the different
archaeological theories used to formulate such research designs, and the
methods, sampling, and excavation strategies used in archeology to explore
those questions.
Each team will be responsible for helping to develop a research design,
retrieving archaeological data (material culture and archaeobiology data),
cleaning and cataloging the materials, data entry, and analyzing artifacts and
archaeobiological materials from one town lot. Student teams will work closely
in a mentorship situation with Illinois State Museum, Research and Collection
Center (ISM-RCC), University of Illinois, and DePaul University staff in order to
acquire the necessary skills to perform scientific research. Each student
will "specialize" in one form of analysis and they will report on their findings at
the end of the summer session. This information will allow students to work as
a team to reconstruct the landscape and lifeways of residents of this historic
town.
Evening lectures will be presented and the group will take several field trips to
local historic sites and museums during the ten-week course.
* Results:
At the end of the course student teams will make a presentation of their
results. Field school staff and members of the community interested in this
archaeology project will be invited to a half-day symposium to listen to and
discuss the results presented by each team member. The presentation will
allow for the dissemination of new information as well as group assessment
and constructive critique of the work of each field school participant and the
overall project. With the help of field school instructors, this presentation will
introduce students to the skill of public speaking and it will help provide them
the techniques for communicating scientific results to a public audience. After
this presentation and discussion, student teams will assess evaluations and
create a strategy on how to best present this work to other audiences. They
can also provide their assessments of the priorities that should be placed on
the various research goals to be pursued in ongoing historical and
archaeological investigations at the New Philadelphia site.
* Project Location, Facilities and Student Stipends:
All students are required to be in Pike County on May 27, 2008 and the
instructions will begin on May 28. New Philadelphia is about 75 miles west of
Springfield, Illinois, and 25 miles east of Hannibal, Missouri. There is no mass
transportation to the immediate area. The closest town is Barry, Illinois
(population 1,400) where students will stay at the Kinderhook Lodge. Lodging
and meals will be provided during weeks 1-5 while staying in Pike County and
students will be transported to the site every day. During the weekends
students with access to autos are free to travel and explore the region when
fieldtrips are not scheduled. (The Kinderhook Lodge is located between the
towns of Kinderhook and Barry on Rt. 106). During weeks 6-10 field school
participants will move to the student apartments with kitchen facilities in
Springfield, Illinois and work at the ISM-RCC. Lodging (but not meals) is
provided during weeks 6-10. The ISM-RCC facility provides a state-of-the-art
environment and it has vast collections and high quality research laboratories
and offices for anthropology, botany, geology, and zoology. During the
weekends students are free to travel and explore the region.
Students receive a $450 per week stipend paid on a bi-weekly basis.
* Application Procedure:
Each student is required to submit an application form, transcripts from all
colleges attended, two letters of recommendation, and an essay. For best
consideration, the final date for receipt of all applications materials is March
21, 2008. This field school is sponsored by the National Science Foundation's
Research Experiences for Undergraduates sites program, and will select
students based on their scholarly ability as well as their motivation and ability
to perform scholarly and scientific research. Students from underrepresented
groups are encouraged to apply. Students will be notified of acceptance no
later than April 16, 2008.
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