This poster reports on renewed and emergent social networks developed during three field seasons of archaeological research at the Jackson Wall site on Grand Cayman. Research is sponsored by the National Trust for the Cayman Islands, supporting the first modern terrestrial excavations intentionally centering the history of enslavement on Grand Cayman. The project developed from a local desire to learn more about the history of enslavement and the post-emancipation occupation of a site known locally as Jackson’s Wall. Few archival documents exist to provide context to the site, with oral history, ethnography, school visits, community meetings and archaeological fieldwork bringing its history back into public conversation.

This poster details the preliminary results of Summer 2025 fieldwork at the John ‘Jack’ Hopkins site, conducted by IUP Applied Archaeology MA candidate James Duke in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. John Hopkins was a notable Black resident of Gettysburg who was employed as a groundskeeper at Gettysburg College from 1850 to 1868. The Hopkins family will be the partial focus of a Black History Museum constructed on-site by Gettysburg History/The Adams County Historical Society. A shovel test survey and the excavation of several test units were conducted in the back yard of the circa-1844 structure to better understand use of the space by the Hopkins family within the context of the African Diaspora during the period of the American Civil War. Preliminary results give insight into the subsistence and use of ceramics of the house’s residents, artifact density, and the nature of several features present in the back yard.

The Gullah/Geechee, self-identifying as Indigenous to the coastline of the U.S. Southeast, represent a unique case of how food systems and human-environment engagements are influenced by socioecological and sociopolitical changes, in this case the collapse of the Plantation system. Enslaved and free Gullah/Geechee communities along the Georgia Bight developed intimate relationships with estuarine ecosystems, relying heavily on resources like the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica). On Ossabaw Island, Georgia, shell middens formed by both enslaved and free Gullah/Geechee communities reflect long-term subsistence practices. Through comparative analyses of shell morphology, trace epibiont indicators, and novel applications of Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to determine season of harvest, this study examines shifting and restructured engagements with estuarine resources. Broadly, this research tracks the socioecological impacts of Emancipation and how Gullah/Geechee communities responded to changing socioeconomic conditions following the critical social, economic, and political collapse of the Plantation system.

Human activities affect the earth beneath our feet. This not only changes the way the ground is seen and physically excavated from an archaeological perspective but changes the chemical composition of the soil itself. Archaeologists often use carbon, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, and potassium to identify traces of past human activities. Yet, these elements are difficult to measure using low-cost methods like XRF. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), however, can cheaply and accurate measure these elements. LIBS has been used by geochemists and soil scientists but has not been used in an archaeological study to look at soil chemistry. This poster presents initial results from the first archaeology study to use LIBS for analyzing soil chemistry, focusing on identifying activity areas around the homes of enslaved people at Belle Grove Plantation in Frederick County, Virginia (USA).

Following the end of the U.S. Civil War, formerly enslaved Africans and African Americans established hundreds of freedom colonies across Texas. Although many freedom colony founders were born in Texas, archival records and oral history accounts indicate that others made their way to the South’s western frontier from further afield. These diasporic movements, however, are often obscured by notions of a unified “Black Texan” identity. Using Kincheonville, a freedom colony established seven miles south of Austin, Texas, as a case study, this poster explores the multiple diasporic origins, migratory trajectories, and ethno-regional influences of those who founded and came to reside in Kincheonville during the long century following Emancipation. By approaching Austin’s hinterlands as a ‘rural diaspora space,’ this poster considers how archaeologists can critically reframe diasporic identity formation in rural settings.

In 1887, the U.S. Congress passed the General Allotment Act, aiming to break up tribal communities by replacing communally owned land with individual allotments. For the Wichita, Caddo, and Delaware Nations in Oklahoma, this policy resulted in the loss of 80% of their shared reservation lands. Despite these assimilation efforts, the Wichita people resisted—continuing to build grass houses and arbors, living in multi-family groups, and maintaining dance grounds and gathering spaces on their allotments. These places were, and continue to be, significant to the community and are critical for understanding how Indigenous people circumvented federal policies to continue gathering, practicing ceremonies, and preserving culture. Since 2020, we have worked with the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes to develop minimally invasive research methods to document their allotment histories. This poster presents the results of that research. We invite others researching allotments to connect with us to plan future collaborative conference sessions.

As part of the Undergraduate Summer Research Internship at Western University, I undertook a project to catalog and map mentions of Indigenous people and communities in Texas newspapers between 1840-1900, with the goal of better understanding how racialization changes over decades. My focus was on Medina County, TX, where I undertook fieldwork under the supervision of Dr. Trish Markert in the summer of 2025. Using the University of North Texas' Portal to Texas History database and published accounts on Medina County, I created a Survey123 database that notes terminology, year of publication, and other contextual information, as well as location when available. This resulted in an accessible chronological spreadsheet and visual map that will be available for use in future studies. This project contributes to understandings of correlations between language use, racialization, and discrimination in the 19th century.

This poster introduces early-stage research on Detroit’s Chinatowns through the lens of historical archaeology with a focus on landscape, community, and memory. In the 1870s, Detroit was a fast-growing, industrial, border city of opportunities that attracted an influx of newcomers, including a small number of Chinese immigrants. Bringing together archival information, oral histories, and landscape archaeology, I explore how a hardworking, and close-knit Chinese community was established and thrived across generations, including during precarious times. To do so, I examine the physical contexts and communities of the city’s two Chinatowns, the nineteenth-century settlement that existed for 70 years and the second iteration of Chinatown, which emerged after the earlier neighborhood was relocated and demolished due to urban renewal initiatives in the 1960s. This history is considered in relation to current resurgence by the Chinese diaspora community in Detroit to commemorate and memorialize their ties to the city’s past and future.

Popular accounts often represent American Chinatowns as homogeneous enclaves, contributing to a racializing discourse towards peoples of Asian descent that persists into the 21^st century. In truth, these communities contain significant ethnolinguistic diversity and varied spatial patterning across time and space. This poster expands on the second author’s concept of “distributed Chinatowns” with case studies of rural and urban Chinese communities. This preliminary research adds to the expanding role documentary archaeology plays in unearthing more nuanced representations of Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities across the USA. A critical GIS project combining data from Sanborn fire insurance maps, census records, city directories, and other sources illustrate how Chinese entrepreneurs often provided critical resources in places Anglo/White entrepreneurs avoided or otherwise refused to adequately provision. Case studies from Florida, Texas, and elsewhere illustrate how distributed Chinatowns formed and functioned in multiethnic communities across the nation.