Conference Agenda

In March 2022, the collapse of a dilapidated, early 20th-century blacksmith shop on my family’s sheep ranch in Montour Valley, Idaho prompted a short archaeological salvage project. The project recovered approximately 6,200 items, most of which were metal and associated with various aspects of farm life. Through investigation of the recovered historical artifacts, this research explores the role of family-operated blacksmith shops in rural Idaho – a lesser-known, yet vital component of Idaho’s agricultural history. By the turn of the century, Montour Valley was a bustling industrial hub, supporting a rural community engaged in intensive agriculture and ranching. Blacksmith shops operating on private properties were necessary to maintain agricultural livelihoods, and served as an integral part of my family’s history. More broadly, this research aims to deepen our understanding of the role of smaller, local blacksmiths in the rural American West and enrich the agricultural history of Southwestern Idaho.

Hundreds of Black Americans moved to Portsmouth, NH in the Great Migration, many finding jobs at the local Naval Shipyard. Today the neighborhood where some of those shipyard employees and their families lived is an outdoor history museum called Strawbery Banke. Archaeological research in advance of rehabilitation at the museum’s ca. 1750 Penhallow House uncovered a variety of belongings related to members of four generations of a Black family who lived there from 1916 until 1949. The material record provides evidence of a family engaged with the local economy, their neighbors, and Black beauty trends. In addition to conversations with Geraldine (Cousins) Palmer who lived in the house as a child from 1937 to 1943 and with the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, the archaeological research has shaped the current interpretation and furnishing plans for the house, which will be discussed and shared here.

Technological advances in data collection have affected archaeological analyses and classroom instruction. Artifact digitization, in the form of 3D models, is one of the newest such advances. Digital modeling, however, is often prohibitively expensive and complicated to use. As the profession veers ever further into the digital realm, archaeologists must have the ability to create, access, and share digital data for research. Drawing on the digital, innovative pedagogical techniques that capitalize on the ludic power of science allow for powerful experiential learning opportunities. At the Digital Archaeology Lab (Queens College), I use the iPad Pro, which dramatically reduces the time and financial costs of digitizing archaeological data. Using six iOS applications, my students and I capture data with lidar, photogrammetry, and ARKits to digitize artifacts from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections. The models show fine details at the texture and the mesh levels, which has been a boon in the classroom.

On April 8th 2024, an electrical fire broke out in the archaeology offices and lab at James Madison’s Montpelier causing devastating soot, water, and burn damage to the buildings and portions of the archaeological collections. In the weeks that followed, the staff at Montpelier worked tirelessly to mitigate the effects of water, soot, and mold in the collection. This paper discusses the events of the fire and what we as a department have learned in its aftermath, our ongoing mitigation efforts, and the community outreach and support from colleagues far and wide who have allowed us to maintain grace under fire.

This presentation introduces the Belonging-Centered Emotive Dialogue model; a model of visitor programming designed to address feelings of collective shame and guilt experienced by visitors in heritage spaces in order to promote self-reflection and reconciliatory action. Underpinning this approach is psychological research stating that guilt, when acknowledged, can be used to foster empathy and promote reparation for past harms. The BCED model uses facilitated dialogue and historical archaeological collections to elicit these pro-social benefits of guilt while mitigating the negative consequences of shame including disbelief, defensiveness, or avoidance.

The immediate and long-term impact of the BCED model will be explored through the analysis of its implementation at two museums; the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which was supported by the SHA scholarship program, and St. Mary’s Museum in Ontario. While these case-studies relate to Canadian colonialism, I will propose how this model could be used to interpret other difficult histories.

This paper analyses recent developments in how Holocaust perpetration, victimhood, and bystanding are interpreted and presented in the ‘national’ museums dedicated to Nazi and/or Soviet occupations and repressions in Estonia and Latvia: respectively, Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom (Vabamu) and the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (MOL). Since each of the museums aims, in its own distinct way, to tell a story of ‘national’ suffering and resistance, this paper will focus on analyzing these ‘national’ narratives in a comparative fashion. It particularly focuses on how the Holocaust is presented and interpreted. How are perpetration, collaboration, bystanding, and victimhood interpreted, and who is identified as holding each of these roles during the Holocaust and, as applicable, before and/or after? Are characterizations dynamic or static? And how do these portrayals mesh with the broader aims of each museum as well as current sociopolitical trends in memory, history, and security?