New Philadelphia Archaeological Research Project
Field School in Archaeology and Laboratory Techniques
Summer 2010

May 24, 2010 to July 30, 2010.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences 
for Undergraduates Program (NSF-REU)

** Application Deadline: for best consideration -- March 19, 2010.

Application forms and additional information are available online at:  
http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/NSF/fieldschool.html

Additional background information is available from the project web 
pages, at:  http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/NP/ 

** 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 (over 
$350,000 in today's currency value) -- a remarkable achievement.

Families of African American and European heritage moved to New 
Philadelphia and created a multi-racial community. Local residents likely 
provided "safe house" service 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 in 29 households 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 several miles to the 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).

A collaborative project of archaeologists, historians, and members of 
the local and descendant communities is underway to further research 
the social history of this demographically integrated town and to 
enhance its focus in our national memory and heritage. Participating 
organizations include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
and Springfield, the Illinois State Museum, University of North Carolina, 
the University of Maryland's Center for Heritage Resource Studies, the 
University of Central Florida's Public History Program, and the New 
Philadelphia Association. Sprague's Kinderhook Lodge has also provided 
generous support.  The town site of New Philadelphia is now designated 
as a National Historic Landmark based on its significant archaeological 
resources and exceptional value to our national heritage.

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 University of North Carolina 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 24, 2010, and the 
instructions will begin on May 25. New Philadelphia is about 75 miles 
west of Springfield, Illinois, and 25 miles east of Hannibal, Missouri. 
There are no mass transportation services to the immediate area. The 
closest town is Barry, Illinois (population 1400) 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 students will 
move to the dormitories in Springfield, Illinois and work at the ISM-RCC. 
This 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. Students receive a $450 
per week stipend paid on a bi-weekly basis, and the NSF-REU grant also 
covers the costs of their lodging and meals as described above. Both 
lodging and meals are provided during weeks 1-5, and lodging (but not 
meals) are provided during weeks 6-10. (The university may be required 
to withhold social security tax from each stipend disbursement; we are 
working to determine if this is necessary).

** Additional Information
For additional details about this field school opportunity, please visit 
the web sites listed above, or contact Chris Fennell by email at 
[log in to unmask]