Conference Agenda

Since the early 20^th-century, Far West Texas has served as a romantic backdrop for idealized frontier narratives. As the setting of Hollywood Westerns, wealthy land speculation, patriotic pageantry, religious revivalism, ecotourism, public works projects, and even space exploration, the Trans-Pecos is a microcosm of American heritage politics. This paper focuses on the afterlife of Fort Davis’s military installation and surrounds to examine how nostalgia tourism and history-making shaped a mythical Americana. It also highlights how certain stories obscure contested race relations and enduring wealth disparities. This research aims to better understand the human, environmental, and political tolls of place-making, while revealing how idealized heritage narratives sustain contemporary nationalist movements such as “Make America Great Again.”

The Honouliuli National Historic Site was a Japanese/Japanese-American concentration and POW camp on the island of O‘ahu. Opened in March of 1943 and in operation for 3 years, the camp imprisoned civilians and prisoners of war. Honouliuli Camp faded from public memory following its closure until it was rediscovered in 2002. The site was surveyed and excavated as part of an ongoing University of Hawai‘i West O‘ahu project between 2008 and 2019. The focus of this paper is the material recovered from the guard’s quarters. The guards at Japanese concentration camps participated in atrocities under the Alien Enemies Act. In 2025, the US administration reenacted the Alien Enemies act for the first time since WWII. Returning to these spaces to investigate the guards’ lives provides insight into the historical roots of how average citizens perpetuate centralized autocratic agendas, as we are currently witnessing with ICE agents and DHS.

Archaeology of the 20th century can offer a critical lens that helps draw connection to contemporary social issues. The research within this paper examines the archaeology of public health through domestic and historic sources to create larger connections to modern health issues. The 20th century was framed by medical advancements and public health policies that can be witnessed both in and out of the home. Public health policies and programs have led to disease prevention, public education, and comprehensive care. These very policies are under attack in the modern day. This research aims to address what we can learn from the past through the archaeology of domestic residences in Moscow, Idaho. Looking at how these policies were received by families through archaeology can frame the impact current misinformation campaigns can have on public perception of health, science, and wellness.

Archaeology, and particularly the study of industrial archaeology, provides an opportunity to examine the materialities and power dynamics associated with waste and wasting as fundamental parts of systems of production. Here, waste includes not only the byproducts of production (waste as artifact), but also aspects of human and non-human nature that have also been "wasted" through these processes (identified here as impaired ecologies). Utilizing archaeological examples, we can explore the meaning of waste and processes of wasting to illuminate how socio-intellectual systems determine what is valued or devalued, who is dominant or disposable, and how such determinations reinforce hierarchies of power across space and through time. Ultimately, this paper examines how archaeological research can promote a reevaluation of the nature and meaning of impaired ecologies by challenging the traditional economic, social, and political constructs that continue to shape contemporary understandings related to systems of waste and wasting associated with industrialism.

Observing the crumbling, abandoned buildings of Belchertown State School (Massachusetts), one could be forgiven for thinking that the mass institutionalization of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and the eugenics movement that undergirded it, are all in the past. But one would be wrong. At the Judge Rotenberg Center, also in Massachusetts, staff torture disabled people with electric shock devices. In 31 US states, judges can order the forced sterilization of a disabled person. Under the Trump Administration, all this has become even more explicit: Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., proposes to send substance users and people with mental health disabilities to “wellness farms,” and to create a registry of autistic people. Only by grappling directly with the histories of institutionalization and eugenics can we effectively resist their ongoing effects, and build a more just society.

For over a decade Idaho Public Archaeology (IPA) has talked repeatedly at conferences about the processes of doing community-based archaeology. What has not been part of those discussions is commentary/assessment of the outcomes of archaeological work that has been undertaken throughout the state of Idaho. While the project has meticulously tracked site visitors, numbers of volunteers, volunteer hours, media stories, etc., there have only been sporadic attempts to investigate how this outreach work has been received. This work will comment on previous assessments of our public programming as well as recent work that has evaluated our efforts.

In August 2018, meters from the ruin of his childhood home, a community partner in D’Hanis, TX shared a story: his grandfather had purchased the old stagecoach stop, constructed by German settlers in the 1850s, after escaping the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. Such stories, narrated alongside childhood memories, situated the ruins of Old D’Hanis (also known as Old Town) in an era when segregation dictated the social and spatial order between Mexican and white communities. In this paper, I examine spatial stories of ruins, language, and migration from the oral histories of the Old D’Hanis Archaeological Mapping Project, particularly those recorded with descendants of Mexican families who arrived in the early 1900s. Sifting through the layers, I reflect on the ways 19th century sites become 20th century sites and how the spatial logics that divided a community continue to haunt heritage and migration discourse today.

Southern Prisoners: Deprived of basic healthcare. Forced to work for little to no pay. Warehoused as a means of physical and social control. Removed from families and communities. Denied adequate legal representation. Used to generate income for states and corporate shareholders. ‘Civilly dead’. Disenfranchised. Subjected to horrific and inhumane treatment. Majority Black.

This list describes incarceration in the US South today, but it also describes incarceration in the US South a century ago. Where did this system come from and why has it persisted against a backdrop of expanding civil rights? This paper uses archaeology at the Lone Rock Stockade, a key part of the 19^th and early 20^th century Southern convict lease system, to illustrate how the modern carceral state is historically rooted in chattel slavery. It will reveal how the subversion of state’s sovereign rights by capitalist structures has historically and continues to preclude meaningful prison reform.

Since 2011 Archaeological research at Amache National Historic Site has built strong relationships with Japanese American survivors and descendants of World War II incarceration. These efforts have expanded into cross-cultural collaborations with descendants of Cheyenne and Arapaho survivors of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. A youth ambassador program emerged from this work, giving young people opportunities to attend memorial events, learn from cultural educators, and take part in healing activities. Ambassadors visited both sites three times, learning from one another and the landscapes. These shared experiences led them to create personal narratives that connect ancestral histories to present-day issues and their own lives. This paper—written by an archaeologist and program coordinator, a community educator, and a youth ambassador—explores how culturally grounded, place-based archaeological practices can foster personal and collective healing. As federal sites face pressure to portray “positive” histories, this work affirms the value of confronting difficult pasts with youth.