Conference Agenda

In the 1980s, a working group of urban archaeologists organized within the Society for Historical Archaeology to survey the state of the field, compile enabling legislation and program information, highlight important research emerging from cities, and discuss the challenges posed by this environment. The practice of archaeology in densely populated and dynamic urban environments continues to require collective energy. The goal of this introductory paper is to provide a historiographic framework for the study of urban archaeology. We then document how the definitions, methods, practices, and issues unique to archaeology in cities have changed over time. This paper also recommends possible future directions for a revitalized Urban Archaeology Network that would extend beyond the U.S., to be further discussed at the end of the session. Case studies from urban centers with long-standing archaeology programs – including Alexandria, Charleston, and New York – will also be integrated into the introduction.

The city of Charleston, South Carolina retains a remarkably well-preserved archaeological landscape spanning the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The peninsular city became the administrative center of the colony of Carolina in 1680, and emerged as one of the most critical urban centers in early America. Archaeologists and historians have meticulously traced the location of the original fortifications surrounding the oldest component of the city. However, coupled with the long experience of invested researchers in the region, recent re-analysis of legacy collections has suggested early deposits reflecting daily life during the first forty years of the settlement survive in key locations. Intending to build on the extensive work by colleagues on the Walled City Task Force and at Charles Towne Landing, this paper outlines a mapping project to identify and target significant urban sites at the turn of the eighteenth century in downtown Charleston for future ground truthing and excavation.

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.

Chicago’s cultural heritage is dominated by architectural preservation organizations and supported by an architourism industry that celebrates extant works by famous architects like Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Current archaeological research in Chicago in collaboration with architects and architectural historians has demonstrated how the social histories of these celebrated structures can be illuminated, if not outright discovered, through archaeology. This paper considers recent archaeological work at two sites associated with famed Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe: the Edith Farnsworth House, a National Historic Landmark 60 miles from Chicago and the material apex of Mies’ “less is more” aesthetic; and the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, where Mies’ modernist vision was made possible through a program of urban renewal. These two sites demand attention to the interconnectedness of the city and the country, which a focus on urban archaeology can and should include.

The archaeology of cities is a well-known theme in historical archaeology. In many regards urban archaeology is the hallmark of the discipline. Relatively unexamined, however, is the issue of what constitutes "urban." A major archaeological project in Sandpoint, Idaho provides an opportunity to examine some of the nuances of what "urban" is in archaeological contexts. Despite being geographically isolated and demographically small, the material world of Sandpoint, Idaho reflects extensive connections to major urban centers as well as illustrating community understandings of what is urban.

Recent scholarship on modern-era forced prison labor has called upon archaeologists to consider places of convict labor holistically, including developing projects that examine sites related to the prisoners’ housing, punishment, and administration; sites related to prison guards; and sites constructed through the use of prison labor. While these approaches help to expand understandings of forced prison labor as an integrated system, the actual materials produced through forced prison labor – the bricks, steel, iron, and more made by prisoners during their incarceration – have not been included in these efforts. This paper focuses on the use of prisoner-made architectural materials in the physical fabric of postbellum US South and explores opportunities to document the presence of forced labor-made objects in 19th century Southern cities as an affront to commodity fetishization and the obfuscation of abusive labor practices in both the recent past and the modern day.

Christchurch Archaeology Project was established to preserve, share and research the archaeology of Ōtautahi Christchurch, a city founded by English colonial settlers in 1850. A key part of our vision is to make the wealth of archaeological data recovered following the 2011 earthquake accessible to the public and heritage practitioners alike. To this end, we have built a database to hold the data and a website to make it publicly available. There have been numerous challenges along the way, including the innate complexities of archaeological and historical data from an urban context. Other challenges included capturing data recorded using a range of systems that changed over time and presenting it in ways that were useful to both the public and heritage practitioners. The end result is the Museum of Archaeology Ōtautahi, a database of urban archaeology that is freely available to archaeologists around the world.

A Jewish ritual bath, or mikveh (plural mikva’ot), is one of the most prolific Jewish archaeological features. Due to its essential role in religious life, constructing a mikveh is one of the first projects undertaken when a Jewish community is established. Yet, historical mikva’ot have received less academic attention than contemporary synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. This paper presents examples of mikva’ot that operated in 19th- to early-20th-century US urban centers. The archaeological signatures of these features, as well as associated material culture and documentation, speak not only to the persistence of Jewish ritual practice following 19th-century waves of immigration to the US, but also to the challenges posed by mikveh practice in dense urban spaces.

The Femme Beings Project, established by the authors in 2024, is a collective of scholars from Wayne State University in Detroit-area heritage institutions. The project investigates women’s experiences as sex workers and the conditions they lived under in the Detroit area between 1830 and 1930 by examining historical archaeological evidence related to three archaeological sites in Detroit and the adjacent city of Hamtramck. This presentation introduces our findings and discusses how they reveal the identities of the women who worked and resided in these spaces. It also builds from documentary evidence to reassemble the wider social and environmental contexts of sex workers’ lives in historic Detroit. Two of the sites are places where sex work likely took place: the Gass Saloon and boardinghouse and Bandemer’s Hotel. The third site is a women’s prison and homeless shelter, where sex workers were either incarcerated or may have resided.

Urban skeletal assemblages have been intensely studied, as bioarchaeologists examine relations between environments and health. At the same time, urban sites pose significant challenges, as traditional bioarchaeological methods require that peoples with diverse itineraries be “pinned down” for analysis. The Huntington Anatomical Collection (1893-1921) is composed of immigrants, migrants, and life-long New York City residents, many of whom shared space and time in the city. Yet, they are often sorted into categories for analysis—countries of origin, assigned race and gender, and age—flattening complex movements and social relations and occluding a view of the city as it was lived. Drawing upon archival evidence, I argue that such separation practices have profound implications for how we consider kinship and social relations in the past. These concerns extend into current questions regarding descendant engagement, as practitioners and institutions engage communities of care and navigate future stewardship and/or repatriation.

Drawing from decades of archaeological research in the industrial city of Lowell, as well as a recent excavation in the heart of Lowell's 19th century Irish enclave, we consider practicalities, ethical challenges, and research insights from these urban excavations. A recently completed project at the former site of the Patrick Keyes grocery in Lowell has aided understandings of the immigrant Irish experience, and the transition made by individuals from a rural to an urban lifestyle. Yet pursuing questions about one 19th century group of immigrants in a city that today is made up of many other immigrants, new and old, demands reflection over what stories to tell, and how to tell those stories. Furthermore, the excavation of the Keyes site was rapid, selective, and subject to the consent of a developer. Yet the project provided a valuable opportunity to engage with the contemporary urban population.