This paper will explore how the pre-existing structure of Belfast has shaped and materialized an uncertain peace in the quarter of a century since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. While there are many academic studies of wall murals – and a more limited number of studies of memorials – they often focus on the particularities of individual examples rather than taking a more holistic approach to the connections of materials, time and place needed to understand how these spaces of lived experience and everyday heritage have evolved in various ways. I will argue that close examination of Belfast as a memorialscape can reveal how conflict-era structures continue to shape community reactions to the uncertainties of a fragile peace. This includes interrogating the role of class, reactions to political events, and competing claims of victimhood / victory playing out within and against adjacent communities.

Many cities throughout the world actively engage with their history, but there are also many that focus almost exclusively on their present and future. New York City is preeminent among the latter. This inattention to the past combined with other aspects of urban life – the relentless pace of development and erasure, constant noise and change, competing interests, diverse communities, increasing absorption in digital worlds, and more – makes the important work of teaching about the past especially challenging. This paper presents two projects that have successfully engaged urban audiences in imagining life during earlier times from fragments that remain, a valuable but underappreciated skill archaeologists possess and can teach others. Both projects, one linking industrial design and artifact assemblages from the NYC Archaeological Repository and the other about Seneca Village, engage multiple senses and invite audiences to think like archaeologists and materialize aspects of the city's past in their mind’s eye.

Community-engagement is an obligatory element for many practitioners intent on fostering a 21st century, ethical archaeology. However, community-engagement as a term and a practice remains ill-defined, with as many experiences with and constraints on as there are projects. In large part, this is due to the specific issues and situations engendered by urban realities that necessarily involve a myriad of publics, institutions, agencies, and policies. Given these circumstances, the essential question is whether a working definition of community and engagement is even possible. This paper will seek to address key questions arising from the definitional murkiness of community engagement. Fundamentally, these questions seek to provide insight about how archaeologists in urban spaces utilize and explore community-engaged work. Are there practices and frameworks that do and do not work? Finally, can we manipulate definitional confusion to intuit a better way forward?

The Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas was once home to a thriving Freedmen’s Town. Established on the outskirts of elite, white Oak Cliff in the 1880s, over time the Freedmen’s Town grew to encompass hundreds of residences, community anchors, and businesses. However, by the mid-20th century, the city labeled it as a slum, justifying clearance, urban renewal, and infrastructure projects that displaced residents, segregated the community, and disrupted its fabric, cutting off the community’s circulation. Today, what remains of Oak Cliff’s Freedmen’s Town proudly endures in the Tenth Street Historic District – a testament to the resilience of its descendants. In the face of historical erasures and ongoing challenges, descendants boldly define, preserve, and envision a vibrant future for their community. This paper discusses how archaeological GIS and placekeeping strategies support descendants in chronicling their history, challenging harmful narratives, and envisioning Tenth Street as a cultural heritage destination.

From 2015 until 2022, the National Park Service’s Christiansted National Historic Site and the Southeast Archeological Center, as part of the Slave Wrecks Project, conducted a multi-year community archeology program in downtown Christiansted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands that combined underwater and terrestrial archeology with public engagement activities including educational and training programs, museum exhibits, professional internships, and archival research. This paper will summarize the efforts made to provide opportunities to educate and engage local youth about the research, interpretation, and preservation of the important cultural heritage of the Caribbean related to histories and sites pertaining to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It will also reflect on some lessons learned.

Urban archaeology requires theory and methods tailored to densely-developed urban settings and the flexibility to apply to hyper-local conditions. Washington, DC’s archaeology guidelines are 25 years old and in dire need of updating to encompass current methods and technologies -such as GIS, and remote sensing- and for fundamental changes in curation, and collections and data management, including our new federally-compliant (36CFR79) curation facility. The pace of development has increased at the same time as CRM industry consolidation resulting in PIs lacking relevant local experience planning surveys. It’s clear to us that we need concise, well-written, targeted guidelines that reflect general best practices to streamline the compliance survey review process. We look to our urban archaeology peers, the CRM community, and the public, for their input and support for a robust and collaborative update process so we can better face the future of managing the past.

While the presence of soil contamination is not unique to urban archaeological sites, the density of industrial and residential development in cities often results in the contamination of archaeologically sensitive soils. In New York City in recent years, archaeologists have excavated within Brownfield and Superfund sites and other sites contaminated with petroleum, diesel oil, mercury, lead, and other materials that pose hazards to human health. While environmental professionals are trained and equipped for working within contaminated soils, archaeologists rarely have sufficient training or expertise to safely work in contaminated areas or with contaminated artifacts. This paper will describe recent work on several contaminated sites and outline the need for greater training for archaeologists and a need for standardized protocols for working with hazardous materials and decontaminating archaeological artifacts and samples -including human remains and porous artifacts- to ensure that archaeologists are not harmed in the field or in the lab.

Over the last six years, the City of St. Augustine has experienced increased urbanization and a growing tourism industry while simultaneously facing climate change realities. New construction projects on private property aim to fight flooding by complying with new building codes and stormwater retention requirements. Meanwhile, municipal efforts to combat sea level rise and alleviate flooding – including site drainage plans, underground retention ponds, and permeable surfaces – help keep the city dry, but pose a significant threat to archaeological resources. As part of the City’s Planning and Building Department, the Archaeology Program can sometimes assist with creating a balance between battling environmental hazards, meeting historic preservation standards, accommodating city planning, and preserving archaeological resources. Several development projects on a variety of public, private, commercial, and residential properties are used as case studies for successful collaboration between a small municipal government, contractors, and property owners.