The Phoenix Project refers to the ongoing reinvestigation of the MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) archaeological legacy collection at Georgia State University (GSU). The collection resulted from archaeological investigations in the late 1970s when the initial MARTA rail lines were constructed; one of the early, urban archaeology projects resulting from the NHPA of 1966. About a decade ago, Glover facilitated the collection’s return to GSU where it is housed in almost 500 banker boxes. Since that time, project members have re-engaged with the collection for independent, student-led projects, experiential learning, and public engagement. This paper provides an overview of the Phoenix Project and serves as an introduction to the section.

The MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) Collection is the result of the 1970s archaeological investigations conducted for the initial lines of this public transit system in Atlanta, GA. This archaeological project included lines in cardinal directions connecting at the epicenter of a city that was first established in 1837. At the time of this project, federally mandated cultural resource management was only a decade old, and ‘urban’ archaeology was just emerging as a new focus in the field. This paper will look at the work conducted under Dr. Roy Dickens and his associates as they navigated through the city of Atlanta and a new method of archaeological investigations.

Not only a window onto an important period in the South’s post-Civil War history, the MARTA archaeological collection offers a unique opportunity for students at Georgia State, a large public university located in downtown Atlanta, to interact with a substantial corpus of artefacts excavated from sites around the city, including contexts directly beneath GSU’s campus. Since the collection returned to GSU in 2012, it has consistently been utilized in a broad range of pedagogical activities that span individual graduate thesis research projects to experiential learning classes for freshmen non-majors. We explore the multiple and valuable ways in which GSU students learn about artifact analysis, science and technology in archaeology, archival research, collections management and curation, exhibition practice, and community engaged archaeology from their experiences with the MARTA collection. Highlighting student work, we suggest how learning from and with this historical archaeology collection offers new and impactful directions for archaeological pedagogy.

One of the most durable and valuable datasets historical archaeologists work with are ceramic materials, which vary by use and time and provide archaeologists with chronological and socioeconomic information. To better understand the variability in this class of material culture, archaeologists have created ceramic types that highlight the variation of decoration and paste vitreosity. This allows for inter-site and inter-regional ceramic comparisons. This presentation highlights the processes involved in and the results of creating a ceramic type collection for the GSU Phoenix Project; the Phoenix Project aims at analyzing artifacts excavated in the 1970s that show the history of Atlanta. This involved an in-depth study of post-Civil War ceramic sherds from Atlanta. Through thorough archival and hands-on research, the sherds were identified and placed into typological categories to showcase the variability of historical Atlanta ceramics and can be used as a resource for future research on Atlanta’s past.

Atlanta has always been a major hub for soft drink production since the beginning of the industry, producing the world’s most popular soft drink, Coca-Cola, as well as attracting its competitors and knockoffs from surrounding areas. In this presentation, I discuss my work analyzing the soft drink industry in 20th-century Atlanta based on the physical bottles and cans found in the MARTA Archaeological collection along with associated historical research. The scope of the collection presents substantial data for tracking brands throughout the time and space of 20th-century Atlanta to uncover an untold history of the Southeastern soft drink industry and its role in Atlanta’s history. Academic research on soft drink history and archaeology is rare, but a relatable topic to the public. Through my ongoing research, I have compiled a catalog of all the soda bottles in the collection along with publicly documenting interesting specimens for the Phoenix Project website.