Video
Urban Archeology Corps- 2018 Cotter Award Best Project Winners
Transcript
Roller: Okay, folks, we’re going to get started now. Good afternoon. This is Mike Roller. I’m an archeologist here in the National Park Service Archeology Program in the Washington administrative support office, reporting on a rainy day, second day of spring here in DC. Cherry blossom buds and tourists are growing here on the National Capitol, as happens every year. I have the delightful task of organizing the ArcheoThursday webinar series. Really excited about this presentation today. This season has been kind of a start/stop affair. Details and shutdowns and possible shutdowns looming and stuff. So I think we rescheduled this talk maybe two or three times already. So I really have to thank my presenters for all their patience in sticking with this. Today’s presentations are from the 2018 John L. Cotter Award winners for best project. Generally we try to start our season with the Cotter Award winners. But because of various interruptions, that didn’t happen. So a bit of background about the award. John L. Cotter, 1911 to 1999, was an archeologist best known for his work in Jamestown, Virginia and his contribution to the development of historical archeology. Cotter’s first National Park Service assignment was at Tuzigoot National Monument in Arizona. He went on to be the Northeast regional archeologist between 1957 and 1977. The award was created to recognize professional achievements and exceptional projects in the National Park Service, in honor of Dr. Cotter’s long and distinguished career. I just want to mention that the professional achievement award this year went out to a recently retired NPS archeologist, Jim Bradford for his long, distinguished career. And unfortunately Jim is not able to present a webinar for us this year. But hopefully he’ll present next fall. So today we have in fact four speakers representing three of Urban Archeology Corps projects that went on last summer. And to start, we’ll have my colleague, Teresa Moyer, who works also in the NPS WASO archeology program office in cultural resources, partnerships and [sites?]. She’s going to give a program overview of the Urban Archeology Corps. We’ll then have presentations from Kate Birmingham, who’s currently at the Grand Tetons National Park, but formerly at NACE. Thadra Stanton, archeologist in the Southeast Archeological Center, and Ethan Bullard, at Richmond National Battlefield Park, but currently detailed in Alaska. Just a bit of administrative stuff, the webinars will be recorded and put on the NPS common learning portal. We’re going to get them captioned and 508 compliant. But if you’re interested in having one sooner than later, just contact me by email. We’re going to have four short presentations, and then some time for questions and discussion. And just in the interest in time, please hold your questions until the end. I don’t seem to be seeing my chat function right now. If you do, give me a chat and we’ll see if it pops up. Just remember to engage your mics on your phone. If you’re not asking a question, please make sure that you mute your phones so we don’t hear background noise. And then just a quick announcement. In two weeks, April 4, 2019 at 3 pm, we’ll have our next webinar. The title is Disaster Archeology: National Park Service Response in the Wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. By Joshua Morano from Biscayne National Park. Okay, and now I’m going to turn things over to Teresa Moyer. Let me set up her PowerPoint. Okay. Thanks, Teresa. Go ahead. Moyer: Thanks. Do I just hit the arrow keys to go back and forth? Roller: Yeah. Just hit the left and right. It should work. Moyer: All right. Great. So thank you to the John Cotter Award Committee for awarding the Urban Archeology Corps team the 2018 award. And many thanks to Mike Roller for setting up, and re-setting up, and re-setting up this webinar. And also to the UAC presenters for taking the time to be with us today. The Urban Archeology Corps, or UAC, was a national program that employed youths to conduct interdisciplinary public archeology projects in urban national parks. It aimed to use archeology as a vehicle for civic engagement, to increase the stewardship that youth participants felt for national parks and their surrounding communities, as well as to increase the visibility of archeology in the National Park Service as career options for our diverse constituency. It’s not forwarding. Roller: Let’s see. Moyer: Mike? Roller: Yeah. Yeah. Let me see. Just a second. Um-- Moyer: Could I just tell you next slide? Roller: Sure. Moyer: Next slide, please. Roller: Okay. There you go. Moyer: There we go. All right. So I coordinated the UAC from the NPS archeology program at WASO through funding from the NPS Youth Programs Division and the associate director for cultural resources. Some UAC projects got a financial boost from the National Park Foundation or from their parks friends groups. UAC parks partnered with youth-serving community-based nonprofit organization. In 2012, the UAC piloted at National Capitol Parks East, or NAPE, through a partnership with [unclear] Anacostia River DC. And here you can see our first UAC team. In 2015, the UAC program expanded to include Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, or ChickChat, with the Southeast Conservation Corps, Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site and Richmond National Battlefield Park with Broward Richmond VA, and Santa Monica Mountains, or SAMMO, with Mountain Recreation Conservation Authority. Working with nonprofit youth-serving partners was essential to the UAC model, and each park project was designed to meet the resource management goals of the NTS and the youth support goals of the project partner. These partnerships provided capacity that the Park Service didn’t have on its own. Some of this capacity was administrative, because the partners had the capacity to recruit youth and administer their paychecks when the Park Service couldn’t. But some of this capacity involved the partners’ ability to mentor and track the youth to ensure that they felt supported and had opportunities for growth during and after their UAC project. These partners also administered three-part surveys on behalf of the Park Service about the UAC, which helped the NPS and our partners to make adjustments as the project went on. And it helped the NPS to track changes in attitudes, knowledge and intentions from the start beginning of the project. The next slide, please. Thank you. Each park UAC team leads identified small, interdisciplinary Section 106 and Section 110 archeological projects to fill a need for resource management and health education. Each UAC team, in addition to the UAC park team lead included what we called a project archeologist and yes, a youth mentor, and five to eight participants. And by youth, I mean high school and college aged. If possible, participants from previous years joined UAC teams in subsequent years, sometimes taking on roles with more responsibility. The project archeologist was typically a graduate student who met the secretary’s standards and was supervised by park staff. Each project was based in a park and emphasized interdisciplinary perspectives by using multiple lines of evidence in the research. And the participants, most of whom had never done archeology before, carried out archival and historical research, surveys or field excavations, documentation, paperwork and [RSF?] prompting. UAC teams also worked with other park divisions, such as maintenance for natural resources, to learn about the range of Park Service careers and their connections with archeology. Each UAC carried out scientific work according to the need of the project. And one aim of the UAC was to teach the participants how to apply the scientific method to archeology, and how to think strategically about solving park problem. Students learned and practiced crafting a research question, techniques for investigating historical sources in archeological sites, evaluating the data revealed on-site against the research question and making conclusions. Projects in the field were small-scale, consisting of shovel test pits or limited excavation. And the projects did not actually even have to have excavations if it wasn’t appropriate to the park at that time. Subject matter experts, whether from the Park Service or external partners/agencies, taught the participants about soil plans, GIS and GPS technology and artifact curation. The participants would also visit libraries, archives and museums to learn the historical context of their archeological project. Artifacts were cataloged and curated as per 36GFR79. Archeologists identified the parameters for artifact collection. Some projects, such as Maggie Walker or Richmond at NAPE, took place in urban context, with significant disturbance, where the recovered materials typically dated to the past 30 years. Other projects, such as ChickChat and SAMMO, were conducted outside the urban center. The ChickChat project, I’m looking at Thadra here, in case I’m lying, have not recovered a single artifact for curation? Two artifacts for curation. Artifacts from Sammo, however, revealed important information about prehistoric and historic trade, foodways, and occupation of the Chumash. Next slide, please. UAC projects were in the Park Section 106 pipeline, and were part of their ongoing consultation with their state historic preservation officers. Two parks incorporated tribal consultation. ChickChat consulted with tribes as part of its general management plan process, which included planning for Moccasin Bend, where the UAC took place. A Native American site monitor joined the Sammo UAC to observe the Chumash site excavation. When possible, members of descendant community met with the team to talk about their life stories and their people’s history. Next slide, please. And here we have Richmond, a meeting with the Gravel Hill community. Another way that the UAC program relied on its partners was their ability to build bridges between the park and this community to support historical research and public education. The UAC participants learned oral history and interviewing skills in preparation for talking with local community members. For example, at Maggie Walker Richmond, the UAC participants interviewed descendants of the Gravel Hill community, as you can see in the photograph, to learn about post-Civil War African American life in the area. The NACE UAC students interviewed long-time residents of the neighborhood surrounding the Fort Circle Park to learn about how they had interacted with the park over their lifetime. Next slide, please. Participants created educational and interpretive products that disseminated the project we built. They were encouraged to create projects that followed what they thought was interesting about their UAC experience, particularly what they wanted the public to know about the park and its archeology. They often chose issues such as the impact of the past on life today, the significance of untold stories, and the role of archeological stewardship in a democracy. Students designed and developed print brochures, learning by doing activities, community trail plan interpretation, presentations, blog entries and videos and many other formats of what they wanted to say. These materials disseminated the results of archeological work to professionals and communities and expressed the significance of archeology to the students in their voices. This speaking back component proved to be a crucial and unique contribution, because their generational and life perspectives are not something that the NPS can glean on its own. Within parks, Park Service staff, managers and superintendents in fact met often with the students and held listening sessions to get their feedback. Next slide. Each team’s UAC program made a meaningful impact on the almost 145 participants from 2012 to 2017. Program evaluations showed strong, positive change in stewardship, the desire to seek NPS or federal employment, and interest in archeology and history. Many UAC participants returned for multiple years, which we interpret to be a sign of success in the program. UAC team members have since joined Youth Conservation Corps or other internship programs, or have used the UAC to broach their academic degrees into jobs in history or rangering. Project archeologists have found fulltime employment. In fact, one UAC participant is now an FTE archeologist with the National Park Service and is in the process of creating a UAC at her park. Slide, please. What was helpful about the UAC was understanding that the National Park Service has needs, its resources have needs. And that everything we do must carry out the NPS mission. But that this program was even more so about giving the participants options for their future. For some participants, they got a paid job that kept them in line when they needed to be. For others, the UAC gave them a track that was different from the one their parents insisted was the only one. And for others, the UAC helped to clarify what they wanted to do or what they were good at. And the NPS, too, learned from our partners and the participants. We got a better handle on the limits and possibilities of archeological research projects like this. We gained a better understanding of the challenges faced by kids today, and by their parents. And we honed a sense of the potential for archeology to do good. Slide, please. The UAC team leads who you are about to hear from are outstanding archeologists and resource managers. [unclear] UAC projects, they made major impacts on the UAC participants and contributed significantly to rethinking public outreach and education through NPS archeology. All [unclear] their incredibly busy time to take on this program and have justified the benefits of conducting compliance work through the UAC rather than contracting as an educational opportunity. Due to their extraordinary dedication, they deserve this prestigious award. Slide, please. Thank you. Roller: Thanks, Teresa. Great. Kate, if it’s easier, I can just switch the slides for you. Birmingham: Yeah. That would be great. Roller: Okay. Thanks. Birmingham: Cool. That was awesome. Thank you so much, Mike. And you made me totally jealous when you talked about budding cherry blossoms when you started. Because I don't know if you guys, all of you on the phone know, but here in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, we got like 70 billion feet of snow this winter. (laughs) All in February. So it’s definitely, definitely a change for me from DC. But it is also awesome. But thanks so much-- Roller: We just got slush and sleet here, so. Birmingham: Sorry? Roller: We just got sleet and slush here pretty much all winter, so— Birmingham: (laughs) Yeah, well, and we win the pretty award, I guess. It’s very beautiful. But yeah, thanks so much, Mike for, as Teresa said, scheduling and rescheduling. I’m really happy to participate in this, and I’m really thankful for the Cotter Award Committee for bestowing the award to all of us. And you know, Teresa thanked all of us. But I think it’s very important to state that without Teresa Moyer, this program wouldn't exist. And she’s sort of been the force behind it and really deserves this. So I just wanted to make sure that that was very clear, that she kept all of this going for us. I think for us, UAC’s been a true labor of love. I think for me, one of the things when I started working in archeology was, in the museum field, was that there was a disparity between some people, particularly first generation college students with, you know, a lot of parents saying you should really go into a field that you know will make you money. And so this was an opportunity to sort of get interested students a job learning about all of these different career fields, and learning about stewardship in a way in which I haven’t necessarily seen before revolving around archeology, particularly for students who don’t have field school experience and who are really sort of dipping their toe in. So for me, that’s one of the many reasons why it’s important. But so National Capitol Parks East, or NACE, is a wonderfully confusing administrative grouping of about 16 national parks in Washington, DC and Maryland. And it constitutes a trove of what I think are absolutely incredible resources. And so I was the cultural resources program manager there for six years. And when I arrived, I picked up the care of the pilot UAC program. And over my time there, we really honed in on a lot of the key aspects of the program and what worked best for us and what was of most value to the students. Slide, please. And the way that we staffed the program changed a bit over the years. We did some of the trial and error, I think, before the 2015 national launch. And in some years, all of the hiring was conducted by Groundworks and Anacostia River DC, our partner. During others, we did add YCC students. And that changed over the years. But the age of student varied from 15 to 25, which created really interesting dynamics sometimes. Every year our partner hired a project archeologist in consultation with us, who worked with the groups on a day to day basis. And at NACE over the six years of the program, we had three incredible women who served in that role: Dr. Mary Furlong Minkoff, Dr. Beth Pruitt, and Chrissy Ames. And none of this could have happened without any of them. And they’re just really awesome. And we of course also had our [East?] mentors. And Teresa mentioned Alexis Morris, who is starting her own UAC. And without her, you know, I don't know where we’d be. Slide, please. So our general goals for the program were to increase the diverse dialog in archeology, expose our students and staff to new perspectives and skills. Of course, to meet the requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act, to provide meaningful employment to youth, and also to focus our time and energy on enhancing relationships with local communities. And my major hope, personally, every year, was to inspire at least some sort of interest in history in our parks, and to mentor participants. And upon some reflection, what I gained every year was the way in which all of our individual perspectives, and our interactions with one another changed how we viewed our parks. Next slide. Educational opportunities were probably the central component of the UAC. And we worked with a lot of professionals in the NPS and within the larger DC community. We did things like GIS and GPS workshops. We taught surveying and excavation methods. We would go on tours of museum storage facilities and museums, go on park tours with all different rangers and historians. I particularly liked to have different individuals give tours of the same place. So I would have them go on a tour with a park ranger of the Frederick Douglass House, with a curator for the Frederick Douglass House, and some other individuals so that they could get different perspectives of history as told by different individuals, particularly when they were working on projects at those particular sites. And that generally was pretty interesting. And we also spent a lot of time teaching participants how to conduct primary document research. We were pretty lucky in that we were really close to the National Archives and Library of Congress. So we would, some of it required teaching students how to get a form of ID so that they could get a researcher card. They learned how to use microfiche. They learned how to patiently wait for a document request to come back. You know, the key things in primary document research. And particularly, they learned how to read cursive. Because many of them didn’t necessarily learn how to do that anymore in school. So that was interesting. And it was always really surprising to us that participants of the program really, really loved the research part. And they found that their interaction with those handwritten documents allowed them to feel directly connected with the original authors. And that often inspired a lot of them through the summer, which was really exciting. We also took participants on a lot of field trips, both within and outside of the National Capitol Region. The last couple of UAC groups actually came out here to Grand Teton National Park, where I am now. And these were some really important informative experiences for a lot of them. Many of our students had never left the DC area. And so it was really exciting to teach them how to camp and to do all of that type of work. Slide. So of course I had to put the exclamation points in Section 106. Of course, I’m very excited about it. But the participants were excited to get to the field work every summer, too. And I loved having the help with our 106 and 110 backlog. But UAC projects over the years helped us to document an ARPA violation at Fort Mahan Park. We surveyed trail improvement sites at the Civil War Defenses of Washington. We surveyed a point of [Oxen Hole?] Farm prior to a silo preservation project. We prepared for a road project adjacent to the Fort [Deponter?] Works. And then during our last couple of years of the UAC, we surveyed portions of the Frederick Douglass House National Historic Site. And generally the feelings of the students about field work was varied. But my very unscientific analysis indicates that the unhappiest groups were working in full sun during August in DC. So I cannot blame any of them for that. (laughs) But we also tried [to?] work with archeologists at fellow parks in the region to provide assistance for small projects. Because I really liked getting the students out to different places in the region. So we worked at Rock Creek Park, the George Washington Memorial Parkway, and Monocacy National Battlefield over the years. And the participants in particular, even on our small 106 projects I tried to invite WASO archeologists, NPS archeologists from all over to come dig with us and provide mentorship to the students. And they really loved talking to everyone. The students loved hearing the experiences and perspectives of all of us. So I’m very grateful that we had that level of participation from everyone. Slide. And lab work, of course, was a huge component of our educational process. Before field work every year, we would meet at the Museum Resource Center, which is the storage facility for the National Capitol Region. And the regional archeology program archeologists, particularly Marian Creveling and Karen Orrence would always give this huge tour to everyone, talk with everyone, particularly about the identification of prehistoric materials, since it was a little harder to conceptualize for the students to talk about collections care and object processing. And I also have to thank Marian and Karen who, you know, they put their all into everything, but they also had to take some of my loose ends when I relocated here. So I appreciate that, and leave that on record. But it was always really important. I think the students really got a concept of the fact of the longevity of what they were doing. That it wasn’t just something that they were doing for a summer, and then it went away. That there was actually a lot of time and work and effort that went into all our work. And future research potential. I think that was very interesting to them. Next slide, please. So our goal is always to have some sort of interpretive product as the result of our UAC efforts. In some years they produce videos. And there’s an image here of a video that was actually used for a very large ethnographic project, and the [unclear] produced by one of our students, who then went on to work for the NPS for a time. And the videos ended up, we sort of fazed out of those a little bit just because it took half the summer to teach them how to create the videos. Which was a useful skill, but then we sort of refocused that a little bit over time. But then we sort of looked more at blog posts using Instagram and tags to sort of reach a different audience. A lot of the audience of the peers of the students, so that they could sort of live vicariously through what they were doing. Next slide. The biggest impact of our work always came from community engagement efforts. And these included community days, participation in a DC Day of Archeology, general public archeology outreach as we were doing projects, and work with the office of the DC archeologists. And we did want to instill the importance of consultation in archeological stewardship, and how important that was, and sharing data and how to successfully share data. And one thing I’ll point out is there’s an image at the top center of one of our participants who was an education student in college. And he did his own version of the cookie excavation, which was like the most popular activity at the DC Day of Archeology that year. And it was very well talked about. They just got so excited about it. And it was really, really fun working with them and seeing their ideas about how we could engage better with students, rather than doing some of the same things that we’d been sort of recycling over a number of years. Next slide. And there are a ton of important themes and stories I could tell about the UAC. My favorite times with the groups were when we were able to have very deep and meaningful discussions about how we interpret history, where our data comes from and why are diverse narratives, and the storytellers that deliver those narratives are so important for our profession. And everyone, every participant taught me, and continues to teach me throughout my own career. And I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have those relationships and to continue talking with these students. And I know I didn’t get as explicitly into a lot of project archeology here, but I felt like the full breadth of what we covered over the years deserved some attention. But during Q&A, if you guys have specifics, you can let me know. But thank you. Roller: Thanks, Kate. And we’ll move on to Ethan. Ethan, I’ll just change the slides for you if that’s all right. Are you out there? Bullard: Sorry. Yup, here I am. Yeah, that’s great. Uh oh. Is that slide—I’m only seeing half the slide. I don't know if you’ve got the full image there. Roller: How is that? Bullard: I can see a big white space with a—I saw all of Kate’s slides just fine. You can scroll down to it, Mike. Roller: Oh, you know what? Pdfs sometimes do this. I think on each individual computer, you may be able to slide up and down, scroll up and down. Bullard: Oh, okay. There you go. Roller: Can you do that? Okay. All right. I apologize. Bullard: Yeah. That’s fine. Well, thank you, folks. Yeah, my name is Ethan Bullard and I’m the museum curator at Richmond National Battlefield Park and the Maggie Walker National Historic Site. But like Mike said, I’m on detail. I’m up in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Southeast Alaska. A lot different than back home. But yeah, myself along with our chief of resources, Kristin Allen, we were the two that managed the Urban Archeology Corps program for our two parks, 2015 to 2018. And I want to echo Kate’s point that we really owe Teresa a huge round of applause and a huge thanks for spearheading this and championing this throughout all its years. And I personally am really honored to be a part of this program and to receive this award. So you know, we have a variety of sites between these two parks. We’re co-managed, same administration. A lot of crossover with the same interp between the two parks. And even though we tell a broad span of history that we recognize the concept of UAC really lent itself well to discovering the city’s deep, rich, African American history as it’s manifested in both of our parks. Those of you that don’t know, Richmond is a medium-sized city with around 220,000 residents in a pretty large, sprawling metro area. And as a historic city, it’s most well known as the capital of the Confederacy and of course the state capital. But it has a real compelling history of Native American history. It was once the seat of government for the Powhatan Nation. It was the largest market for interstate slave trading. And it was also, after the Civil War, considered the birthplace of black capitalism, which led to a healthy black middle class population in the early 20th century. So these stories aren’t always well known and well publicized, especially to high school students. And so a major goal for us for all three years was to empower young minority voices of today by investigating powerful minority stories from the past. And this was just a perfect lens for uncovering that. Next slide, please, Mike. So our two parks are, again, kind of sprawling. So we’ve got three urban sites downtown, including the Maggie Walker National Historic Site that’s a furnished house museum. The home of Maggie Lena Walker, the nation’s first African American female bank president. Then we have two Civil War museums downtown and then another eleven Civil War battle sites scattered in the counties to the south and east, the northeast of the city of Richmond. So we got time to explore all of these places between the three years of this program. And our partner, as Teresa mentioned, was Groundwork RVA, a nonprofit, sort of the Richmond branch of the national Groundwork organization. And they had a proven track record of working with the Richmond Public School system through their green teams. And these were groups of high schoolers that learned outdoor sciences while contributing to trail construction and other outdoor park infrastructure and maintenance. So because they had a rapport with the schools and with these green team students, Groundwork selected the high schoolers and jointly the NPS and Groundwork selected the project archeologist. I should mention that Richmond and Maggie Walker do not have a staff archeologist. So most of our excavations were done, are traditionally done through contract, or occasionally with regional assistance and with borrowed help from other parks. But we do not have a staff archeologist. And so that was, you know, an important thing to consider throughout our term with this program. So I wanted to do just kind of a play by play of our three summers, and actually our first foray within the pilot week. So if you’ll start with the next slide, Mike. Basically we got, we had heard of the success, of course, of UAC in Anacostia, at the National Capitol Parks East. And Teresa called, I don’t really recall how it all began, but we got the notion that we were going to attempt to do it in Richmond for the summer of 2015. But first we wanted to test it out in a pilot program. So we did a one-week program during spring break of 2015. The theme became Maggie Walker’s Richmond. We knew that obviously in one week, limited time, limited funds, this was not going to be an excavation-driven project. And so we knew right away, okay, we can use some of the disciplines of archeology—mapping, primary and secondary source research, oral history and of course interpretation—use all of these tools as a window into discovering more about Maggie Walker and her influence on Richmond. Because the thing is, the Park Service maintains Maggie Walker’s home. This is where she lived as an adult. You can see a photo of her there. For those of you who don’t know, she created a bank in 1903, making her the nation’s first African American female bank president. She also ran an African American newspaper and a department store and led a large fraternal organization called the Independent Order of Saint Luke. So she had quite a big footprint in Richmond and in black America at large. But the park’s only resource is her home where she lived for the last 30 years of her adult life. It’s an urban setting, obviously. And it’s a great place to interpret her life. Or at least her domestic life, her personal life, but not as much to reach out and see some of her other manifestations in the community. And so what we wanted to do is explore her Richmond. See these other sites that are not managed by us. So that includes her birthplace and her burial site, her businesses or offices, her church and her school. A lot of these are either privately owned or they’re owned by some other entity. They’re not well interpreted. If you’ll go to the next slide, you’ll see, for instance, this is Maggie Walker’s emporium. This was a general store that Mrs. Walker ran, staffed primarily by African American women, from 1905 to 1911. And it is shuttered now, boarded up. And there’s no interpretation on it whatsoever. So it really unfortunately kind of locks in its rather compelling history and folks just don’t know about it. So it’s great of course to bring our students by. And they can see these sites. And like I mentioned, these other sites. We start to develop this theme that these are hidden in plain sight. This is just this vibrant history that students have gone past a zillion times and had no idea. And so to reveal these and to share them with the community, we created a brochure. It was done in a zine format, which was, you know, kind of had like a scrapbook type of feel to it. But it was following an overall narrative, including maps and a timeline and a self-guided tour, and then first person language that the students wrote for them to express their personal interest in the various Walker-related locations that I mentioned. So if you’ll go to the next slide, you’ll see what we did. Here’s our group of students from the pilot week. Along, by the way, with their project archeologist, Courtney Bowles. And so what we did is we created that zine, the students created the zine. The Park Service printed copies and stocked it in our visitor center at Maggie Walker. But then also, the students created this cool little newspaper box that they painted and stenciled and got permission from the city to place it right in front of the Saint Luke Emporium, which is right next door, or right down the street from one of Walker’s bank locations. And so this was a way to just do exactly what had been missing, is to provide some free interpretation on these sites. So, huge success, we thought, for that first week pilot program. We definitely wanted to pursue it in the summer. So, next slide. You’ll see what we did, for that first full summer program was something actually quite different. We’re still based in Maggie Walker. That became our classroom space. But every day we took field trips about, almost a half an hour away to the southeast of the city to a new parcel of land that the park had acquired at a place called, well, the Glendale Battlefield. Part of the 1862 campaigns around Richmond. But this parcel sits in an area known as the Gravel Hill Community and particularly it was the property of a family, the Sykes family. And so interesting little story here is that in the late 1700s, a farming family, a plantation family, the Pleasants, manumitted all of their slaves. I forget the total amount of enslaved people that they owned, but in their will the planter gave them their freedom. And so a lot of these formerly enslaved people and their descendants remained on the property as farmers, as free farmers during the slavery era. So, a bit of an anomaly. Something you don’t really get to discover much of, and certainly something that was eye-opening to these students, who are really mostly taught, okay, before 1865, to be black was to be enslaved. And here we have more than half a century of black autonomy and a little bit of independence really out in rural Virginia. But like I said, the park acquired a parcel of land because it’s key to our Glendale Battlefield. And we wanted to identify the foundation, or at least we knew there was a sort of modern foundation from the site’s descendants. But we wanted to better pinpoint an original foundation from one of the homes there. And so, next slide. I should mention that our project archeologist, Courtney, she was fantastic, was an amazing creative thinker. She was working on her degree and did not meet secretary of Interior standards. So we did have to bring in a hired gun to help us with the excavation. And for that we had the excellent help of Erik Kreusch, who was, at that time, the Northeast Region anthropologist. So that’s him in the center there in that slide. And during the excavation, Eric, one of his best contributions that summer and something that’s stuck with us for a while is the insistence on having these excavations open to the public. And so we created a public archeology day sort of midway through the program where Gravel Hill residents, you know, the folks that are still in that community today that have descended from those original Pleasants and Sykes folks that worked that land for centuries, they’re still around. But we also invited the press and educators and park staff and family members and other museum staff from the area. And it was an opportunity for them to see what we were doing, for the students to explain what they were doing. And that was hugely successful. And so we continued the excavation. And by the end of the summer, if you’ll go to the next slide— --we then hosted another type of community day. And you’re already familiar with that photo on the left. As Teresa had mentioned earlier, these descendants at Gravel Hill, many of whom have lived on the same parcel of land for several centuries, they had family reunions there. We fortunately were able to coordinate this with one of these family reunions. Some of their family live overseas. And so it was really, really powerful. We basically used their community center there, which is an old Jim Crow era Rosenwald school. I wish I had a photo of that here. Unfortunately, I don’t. But you know, it was a catered event. The students prepared presentations, a short video, little posters throughout the room. And even [this?] artifact display case with some of the material that we found during the excavation. But that was really cool. Huge success. You know, it was a way for us to not just show off what we and Groundwork had been doing, but really to inspire the Gravel Hill descendants with a renewed sense of pride in their own unique story. And that was really moving, especially for the older generation there that were aware that younger folks are moving away and getting less interested in personal history. So to have this new class of students that weren’t even related to these people to be impassioned, it was just really moving. So the next summer, if you go to the next slide there, yep, we returned downtown to a different unit of the Richmond National Battlefield Park. And this was focused at Chimborazo. So Chimborazo is our headquarters. You can see that the building in the back there, which is a 1909 weather bureau building. But during the Civil War, it was the largest Confederate hospital. Not that building, of course, but actually about 150 wooden buildings standing on this giant plateau on what was then the eastern edge of downtown Richmond. And that’s the story that most people know about Chimborazo. Oh, big old Confederate hospital. But it had a history about three times as long as it had as a hospital for being a freemen’s camp, essentially. So initially right after the end of the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency, was operating that as a refugee camp. Offering formal education and housing and food rations and medical aid to the recently liberated enslaved people from the area. When Reconstruction ended and the federal government pulled out, that area remained as sort of a self-governed community that never had an official name or anything like that. But you know, it had quite an interesting history where some of the folks that were living there dismantled old boards from the hospital buildings to create their own buildings, their own dwellings. And you know, and really this murky area of post-Civil War, post-Reconstruction life they had, had a committee with some level of protection. Although there was also a lot of violence and attempts from white Richmonders to kick them out. So it was something that I learned a lot about just in discovering this. And you know, the students, it was, again, totally eye-opening for them. Let’s see, if you’ll go to the next slide, during the excavation what we were hoping to find out was, again, something similar to what we’d done the previous summer, to identify a footprint, a post hole, something to give us an indication of where one of the original buildings from the hospital would have existed that we could then align with one of the historic maps. The problem was that there’d been so much early 20th century landscaping and grading, earth moving. Because what had happened, and ultimately what had kicked out the Freedmen that had settled there was when the city annexed that land, and they created a city park around it, and so they evicted the black population that was there. And then they sculpted the ground and made these rolling hills. There was so much new fill that we recognized we would have needed like an excavator to dig much, much deeper. So most of what the students ended up discovering was early 20th century building material. As the neighborhood expanded around it, you can see in the background there in the upper right, some of these late 19th century row houses and such. Although they did find a large cache of animal bones that we never did get dated but looked like crudely cut, crudely butchered deer. Possibly some cow bones, found some teeth, things like that that are still being curated now or cataloged now, but are potential indications of some of the self-sufficiency during that post-Reconstruction era. Just like with the summer before, we did another public archeology day, if you go to the next slide. This is another excellent opportunity, inviting the press out, and neighborhood residents. And again, families and park staff and everybody. Unfortunately, the thing that was missing this year that we found was that we didn’t have that intrinsic stakeholder community like we had in Gravel Hill. Like nobody in this neighborhood, Chimborazo, really claimed any sort of ethnographic tie or any real lineage to the place, even folks that had been there for years. This was just sort of a novelty. And I know that the students picked up on that, you know, that they almost felt like they were just working in someone’s city park, which they were, as opposed to really a tie to other people’s history. Although it was, I think, pretty moving, that they were just compelled by the story itself. And found themselves contemplating their own family histories and bridging that gap of like wait a minute, what happened after slavery? What were some of those next steps, and what were some of those stories that we have not yet told? For the next slide, you’ll see that we did, just like the summer before, hosted kind of a culminating event with another public component where students gave presentations, created interpretative displays, exhibit cases. And something really, really cool that they did was create, you can see in the upper left photo there, they created that outline posting on four corners and two sides these giant wayside markers indicating the accurate size of just one of those hospital buildings. And in each of those posts, they created this wayside with interpretation on the Freedmen’s camp there. And that’s one that is missing. It still is missing. It stayed up for several months. But we thought of this as a potential blueprint for future interpretation there. Because again, the main focus all around that site is the Civil War history and the Confederate hospital history. And you know, this is an opportunity, I think, still, to expand that and get some permanent wayside interpretation out there. All right. I’m going to wrap this up pretty quick. Sorry if I’m dragging. Next slide there. So in 2017, we returned to this concept of Maggie Walker’s Richmond for a whole summer-long program. It’s an entirely different group of students then than had participated in the pilot week. So it was an opportunity to, you know, to revisit for me, but for them it was all new. Go into greater detail, greater depth. Do a lot of research at the state library, looking, learning some new skill sets, like genealogical research that the students themselves were able to trace their own families, which was really cool. Just like in the pilot week, the students created another brochure. But they took it up a notch, and that they actually hosted, this was really fun, a trolley tour of Maggie Walker’s Richmond. So if you can see there in the back left, there’s this wooden trolley that Groundwork rented for the day. And the students had their invitation list of family and teachers and people that they drove, a driver drove them around the city. So rather than just reading about Maggie Walker’s emporium and her bank and her church, we went to all these places. And each student took turns performing like a 10-minute prepared piece on these different locations. And that was really special, because even though they’d given little brief presentations here and there in the past, in previous summers they’d done that, it almost always defaulted to like the best speaker in the group would always kind of get most of the attention. Where this, each person was really kind of thrust into the limelight. And it was an opportunity for them to practice their public speaking skills. So that was a neat element that was never intended as part of the goal, but definitely one of the outcomes of this. And something especially interesting is the summer of this program was also the summer that the statue that these students are gathered around here was dedicated. It was dedicated in July of 2017, right in the midst of the national discourse on confederate monuments, the Charlottesville riots. All of this is happening at the exact same time. So these students are learning about oh, what to do with these Confederate monuments. And meanwhile, the city’s also having this public art process that culminates with the installation of a bronze monument to Maggie Walker. So that was a real uplifting moment for that summer and for those students and certainly for myself. And then, final slide, I just want to talk a little bit about some of the takeaways from this program. You know, I evolved throughout the whole thing, for sure. Not just looking at these old photos where you can chart my hair loss through about three years. But just my expectation of what this could be. I started off kind of results-driven, thinking like, okay, what does the park need? What do we need to investigate? Whereas I quickly realized that these students are bringing something way more valuable than what our park staff can do. I mean, we have a lot of the training and the resources, and we can get funds to do, you know, Section 106 compliance. We can do what we need. But what these students brought was a renewed vitality, they brought a unique perspective. And they became ambassadors for us, for the stories that we’re trying to protect and that we’re trying to preserve. And they became youth ambassadors. And it made such a big difference, you know. I can imagine that event, for instance, at Gravel Hill if the NPS had tried to convey the same stories, it would not have been nearly as touching as it was to have these young, predominantly African American high school students telling those stories. And we got great press coverage throughout. As you can see, a couple of these clippings here. National, NPR picked us up, local press, regional press, NPS press. So that was something really, really moving, just to get our word out there and get the students as our ambassadors. And Kate made a point early on about the exposure for students to learning these potential career options. And that was another thing that was really special here was that these students got to meet lots of different NPS and state historians and different kinds of professions. And every time they got to meet someone new, whether it was a law enforcement ranger or an interpreter or a resource manager, that park staff would take a moment to explain their story, and like how they got to be in the position that they’re in, so that these students, many of whom were the first, presuming that they were going to college, which a lot of them were, they were all high school age, and some of them were graduating and heading into college and are doing well there now. But for a lot of them, again, not knowing what kind of career options were out there, and also not knowing that you can take a zillion different directions to end up working for the Park Service. No two stories are the same. And I think that was pretty moving and inspirational for those students. So again, thank you guys, thanks for the committee and thanks, Teresa. Again, I never set out to do this. This was not our idea, like, “Hey, let’s do Urban Archeology Corps!” This just kind of came down to us and we embraced it. And it became one of the highlights of my career. I’m just really touched to have been a part of it. That’s it. Roller: Awesome. Thanks, Ethan. And thank your park for letting you off a little bit of time from your detail to present. Okay, our next presentation is Thadra Stanton from the Southeast Archeological Center. And I will change the slides. All right, Thadra. Stanton: Hi. So, as you might have noticed with each of these different Urban Archeology Corps programs, each one is a little bit different in that the [unclear] neither one is no less different and unique as well. For this one is for Chattanooga, and focused mainly at Moccasin Bend. And [unclear] next slide. So Moccasin Bend is part of Chattanooga. And as you can see, it is a bend in the Tennessee River. Which is a major pivotal point for the Civil War. There’s two Civil War earthworks over on the right hand side that is heavily forested of that bend. But as you can see now, there is the mental health hospital, there’s a golf course up on the upper left, and then over on the right hand side, there is now a firing range, a weapons firing range there, too. So the park, Moccasin Bend, only makes up a small portion of this. And in there, you can see, where the little green dot is, the Blue Blazes Trail. So this is a small trail that was there prior to Moccasin Bend actually being incorporated into Chattanooga. And as you can see, Chattanooga kind of surrounds Moccasin Bend. But there’s been little, very little development in this area and it’s very heavily wooded. So that became the focus of the Urban Archeology Corps program at Chattanooga. So the Southeast Conservation Corps is the partner that is [unclear] the local organization that Teresa worked with. And they recruited the youth as well as the crew chief that would help out. They would get the students from the local high schools, varying high schools throughout Chattanooga. And then they would meet at one point and get shuttles bussed in to Moccasin Bend or into larger Chattanooga. And then from the Chat staff, Chris Young, he was pretty pivotal in coordinating all of this as well. And so he actually would set it up so that the students would do basically trail crew work Monday through Thursday and then on Friday it was like an educational day. And on that Friday, they would get a tour of some of the other parts of the Chattanooga Battlefield. They would get a chance to even learn like first aid, CPR, other safety things as well. They got to go on a canoeing trip on a Friday. And then he also coordinated with us and with Teresa to bring in Nick Honerkamp from University of Tennessee who had done work there at Moccasin Bend previously. And then me and also Satin Bowman, who had participated in the Urban Archeology Corps training. So even though Chattanooga doesn’t have an archeologist on staff, we kind of stepped into that role to help out the park participate in the program. And it really ended up being a very interesting experience. I would just come in for about a week with either Satin Bowman or another staff member from SEAC and provide like the basic archeological education. Go ahead, next slide, please. So, instead of doing some of the on the ground kind of work, we would instead did some in classroom. So we did presentations. We did these little mock activities as well to give them an opportunity to see what it was like to actually do some mapping. We did actually take them back out into Moccasin Bend and kind of hike around and show them how they would document sites, the paperwork that was involved, how to use GPS units as well. But it was all pretty much focused on just one week, with the rest of the week being mainly for the trail maintenance as well. So, next slide, please. So we did actually do a few shovel tests along. One year we did metal detecting where they were putting in some new signs. And that was one that you saw up there at the beginning of the slide show to replace a couple of signs. And then this is at the very top of Moccasin Bend, and you can see part of the old radio tower behind the one girl on the left hand side. And it was a radio tower that was built on top of the hill in the 1950s. And they basically brought up a bulldozer using the old Civil War roads. Brought it up there and bulldozed off a [unclear] at the top to build this radio tower, which of course is now starting to, is obsolete. And so they’re going to remove that and kind of restore it. The park has, like Teresa mentioned before, has gone through consultations with the family, with the tribal members, but also the local community to see about opening up Moccasin Bend. The firing range is probably going to be closing soon. And so that will allow people to be able to safely access this area a little bit better. Can I have the next slide, please? And so we were just trying to find, in the course of doing the trail work that they did for the Blue Blazes Trail, students needed to know a basic understanding of archeology, what do artifacts look like, what to do when they encounter them. So, in the case that they did in doing the trail work, which included everything from exotic vegetation removal to building footbridges to just basic general trail repair, that if they did encounter anything, they would know what to do. So that was really helpful, because the Blue Blazes Trail had been established prior to the park. It was in really bad repair. And as you saw in the map, it is an isolated area that doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic to it. So the Blue Blazes Trail is going to be just one portion of the larger interpretive plan for Moccasin Bend. Can I have the next slide, please? And so the students actually had a chance to go up here, and this is at the top of the mountain. And Chris Young is, he’s over there on the left, and like I said, he was the main organizer for the Chattanooga Urban Archeology Corps program. And there I am with the red backpack. And he’s explaining the earthworks. And as you can see, it’s a heavily wooded area right now. And because of that, it’s not visited. You have to be guided in by a ranger to access this area. But the cannon emplacement and embattlements are still there. You can still see where the cannons are placed, where there were sleeping pads for the soldiers. You can see the old roads that the horses would have drawn up the weapons and ammunition up to. But it’s a very peaceful experience right in the middle of Chattanooga. So none of these students had ever heard or learned about any of this part. None of them had ever really had this experience. When you’re standing up there, you can see the Tennessee River and you can see the entire Chattanooga city as well. It’s a beautiful viewpoint. And by giving them this opportunity to visit this location with Chris telling the history of the battle and what happened there, and then me coming along to talk about how Moccasin was a pivotal point also for native people, and talk about archeology, and then also the potential future plan for the park, it really opened up conversation to management planning, about how the public has an input into that management plan. How we as park staff make recommendations and then get the feedback from the public, and then what role that they are playing as stewards of this community as well. So this has added to that whole experience, having this conversation in this beautiful area that for right now, very few people get to access. And yet they were given this insider’s tour as well. Chris, of course, he helped facilitate tours into other parts of the park as well. When I was there during my week with the students, I always tried to introduce them to a little less Civil War, a little more Native American. So you saw that one of our pictures that Teresa had up there earlier. It was actually showing atlatl throwing and spear throwing. And we did other activities with them as well, just to kind of give them an opportunity to have a better understanding of the whole history of the park, not just the Civil War aspect of it. But the fact that Moccasin Bend has been such a key location for so long. And a lot of these students just did not know about that. And that was one of the students that one of the students made that just at the couple of weeks he’d been there at that point, he’d already learned more than he had ever learned in his high school history class about Chattanooga and its history. So that said a lot to me in this program, and what it meant to them. So for them, I thought it was a really great opportunity to be allowed to go out to this part of the park that isn’t commonly visited, but yet they drive by it all the time. The freeway goes right around on the other side of the river. And so you can see Moccasin Bend as you’re driving by on the freeway. But not a lot of people go out there unless you’re going to the golf course. So hopefully in the future, more people will be able to get out there and see this place as well. But I know that the students took away from it this experience of seeing how a park begins and development of a new place, and then all the parties that are involved because they did actually get to learn about that experience and the role that they could potentially play in the park’s future as well. So it was a really great opportunity for me to get out there and interact with these students. Like I said, I would only go out there for a one week out of the whole six-week program. The park, of course, did most of the brunt of the work. But I would help out when they were actually doing any excavation. Which I said were pretty limited. But they did, for the Blue Blazes Trail, they divided it up into portions. So each year the students took a new portion. And for them to reach that end of their section and to be able to look back down the trail and see the difference between what they had accomplished and what was still left to be done gave them a very clearly defined goal. It was something that was very easy for them to walk back along that section of trail that they had worked on and to realize that they had made a positive impact onto this environment, and into the park as well. And for them, that was one of the big takeaways was working on these group endeavors. Very physical labor, a lot of it was very physical. And you know, it’s in the South. You’re in Chattanooga in the summertime and very hot. Lots of ticks. (laughter) You can see how we’re all dressed with the pants and everything like that. It was very hot, and ticks are abundant. But it was definitely a bonding. We did have a couple of students return year after year as well. So like Teresa said, that was like a great hallmark that they had learned from it, they enjoyed it enough that they wanted to come back and experience it. And of course, whenever you bring in new people, it changes the dynamic. But for overall, they still had a very positive experience when they walked away from it. And I think each one of these kids coming from Chattanooga learned so much more about the history of their city. And why it was there, and why it was significant, and why the park exists, and what are the resources out there to be experienced. But yeah, I’d like to thank Teresa again for putting this all together. It was such a wonderful experience for me being able to work with the park staff on this endeavor. And I think it was for the students as well. They seemed to always enjoy it and take away a lot of experience from this. That’s it for me. Roller: Thanks, Thadra. Thank you. Thanks all of you for those great presentations. You can definitely see the sort of variation and resourcefulness in the way the UAC operates in each of its different contexts and everything. We have a bit of time for question and answer. And I just saw that Gary, Gary Brown is on from Santa Monica Mountains, I think. Gary wasn’t able to join us for the presentation. He’s pretty busy. Santa Monica Mountains, as you know, was ravaged by a fire and he’s in overdrive right now. But Gary, do you want to say a few words about the UAC program out there, if you have a moment? Brown: Yeah, I could do that. I think that I certainly, I don’t need to echo too much of the comments already made. But it was a really great program that SAMMO was happy to participate in. I think that Teresa Moyer did a fantastic job of putting together the program and providing the oversight for it all. And I believe Thadra mentioned interesting variety and how different parks reached into their resources and came up with something that was interesting and very different in all these cases. I enjoyed hearing the presentations from other parks. At SAMMO, it was more of a traditional Native American archeological connection that we pursued. And we’re happy to include some Native American participants in the program. That made it very gratifying. But it was also a chance at the local level for the park to really tighten up a productive three-way partnership with a local conservancy, the Mountains Recreation Conservation Association. And California State University at Los Angeles. And put together something that worked well in terms of providing opportunities for everyone from high school students to graduate students. And worked out very well. Somebody had mentioned, definitely it was a labor of love that involved a lot of work. But the payoff was quite huge. We had both, we had people that went on and did pursue archeology in their subsequent education, as well as pursue jobs with the Park Service. So I think it was a huge success and very much honored to be part of the award and part of this team that has worked with the Urban Archeology Corps. Roller: Great. Thanks. Thanks, Gary. Brown: Thank you, Mike. Roller: Yeah. Yeah, I’m glad you could join us. We’ve got a few minutes for question and answer. So the chat function does work, if you’re prefer to ask a question by chat for the group in general, or for a specific speaker. If you just hold your mouse to the right of my host name in the participants, you’ll see a little chat bubble. Otherwise, just go ahead and ask questions. We’ve got a question already from Turk. When I first started the NPS, oh, wait, just a minute, my chat disappeared. When I first started the NPS a few years ago, I was told that non-professional archeologists were not allowed to do any digging. Obviously from these UAC projects, that is not the case. Are there any official guidelines available on using volunteers for archeology? Oh, interesting. Can anyone address that? Birmingham: This is Kate Birmingham. And I don't know about official guidelines. But in terms of what I’m familiar with, it’s mainly that you need to have an archeologist who meets the secretary’s standards who is leading an excavation. In terms of their team, I think that team can be made up of whoever. But the report write-up, the actual methodology and planning all has to just be done by a professional archeologist, as far as I’m aware. Roller: Okay. Any other questions? I’ve got a quick question for all of you. For Park Service regions that are interested in starting a UAC program, what kind of considerations do you think should be taken into account beforehand in terms of feasibility? I mean, obviously there’s a lot of resourcefulness that happens both before and afterwards in picking up things. But things like staff capacity and logistics and research opportunities or needs, I can see that a lot of you guys were being very creative in finding ways to staff and take the time out to do these things. So just a general question for folks. Bullard: Yeah, Mike, this is Ethan. And you know, I think two things that the park should perhaps consider as they embrace this kind of idea is what level, regardless of the investigation itself, which as you just answered to Turk’s point, obviously needs a qualified archeologist. But also when working, and I don't know if the rest of you all encountered this, but when your partners are doing a lot of the work, they don’t always, even though they can be great partners, they don’t always speak NPS. And that can be good or bad. But in terms of like, I don't know, I think that the things that the Park Service does well, it’s nice to have a daily presence. And I found that the days that I wasn’t with the students, I was, I don't know, I felt like when I came back there was always a little something missing, or something that I’m like, you know, I don't know if we would have framed it that way or would have gone that direction. So that’s just a tricky balance that I guess that anyone’s going to have to negotiate when you’re working with a partner. And what that meant, though, was that it was tough for a park like ours, Richmond and Maggie Walker, which were relatively small, you know. We don’t have a dedicated archeologist and we also did not have an existing funded project that they were working on. So what that meant is that there was just sometimes a disconnect, I felt like, between what we were capturing like in a classroom or in research or especially when it came to interpretation guidance, whether I was in the room or a park person was in the room and when we weren’t. So that’s something to just keep in mind. I don't know what you can do that information, but trying to recognize. And another major point is if you are going to do an excavation, I do think it would be handy, and again, something that we did not have, but I think it would have helped if we also had a funded project for an actual archeological investigation that had follow-up funding for the cause, then especially the time necessary to do artifact cataloging and curation. Because obviously these are really fast programs, you know. Eight weeks in the middle of summer while the students are also doing other things, including a week-long camping trip and all these things. And you don’t want to leave the park holding the bag of artifacts, as it were. That can be a bit of a drain. And yet I would hate to deprive the students of that opportunity to do the real excavation component. And so I just think if, in a perfect world, you could also pair this program with archeology that’s already permitted and already funded. Roller: Great. Bullard: Anyone else agree? Birmingham: This is Kate. I thought, yeah, those are definitely some great points. And I agree with that. I would also sort of add that some of these programs, for us, one of the big goals for us is sort of diversifying the field. And it’s one of those important things to recognize that when you’re talking very openly about diversity, about society, about culture and sort of like past oppression, I think you definitely have to be dialed into what those dialogs mean. That there’s an emotional burden that goes with some of those, that it requires a lot of self-reflection and acknowledgement about our society and how we address that and how we relate to others. And a lot of ally-ship for some. Sometimes like there are definitely some people who may be uncomfortable with some of those conversations. And for me, I embrace those conversations. So for us, that was always very successful. But I would encourage people to think about that, depending on what type of program someone is interested in doing, that those discussions are really important. And those discussions and how they resolve impact the way that the entire group functions for the entirety of the program. And also how they think of a lot of us as NPS staff and how we interpret history. And if they can or cannot relate to what we’re saying, or feel heard, that is what hinges on the success of the program, in my opinion. Roller: Great. Fantastic. Any other comments? ?: When I was going around to meet and greet with different teams across the country, I was always just really struck by the respectful atmosphere that was created. And I think that among the, and how Park Service staff treated them and how the partners treated them, and really had these expectations that they had something to say and that they had something to contribute. And they didn’t know what was up at that very moment, but they were perfectly capable of stepping up. And for all of these groups, there were some really tough conversations. These projects happened and some moments where, in the nation’s history where some stuff was happening. And the participants really needed to talk about it. So just having a safe space where they could create a group that felt like they could talk to each other, that was one of the interesting things about the Urban Archeology Corps, I think, was just providing the space for people to feel safe where they could talk about stuff. And talk about stuff in this environment that had been respectfully created because that was the expectation. That you would be respectful, that you would work to a high standard, and that you would contribute. And I think that was one of the really special things, that everybody who created their projects really made happen. And it was one of the most important things about it. Bullard: Yeah. I agree. Roller: That’s great. That kind of speaks to my experiences in public archeology. Just because I think doing archeology’s a little bit of a weird thing to do. And it always seems to inspire a lot of fascinating peripheral conversations, because it’s not a conventional way of learning. I’ve always had some really fantastic experiences at archeology sites that I don’t have anywhere else. And maybe some of that kind of physical communal spirit inspires some of that safe conversation. Great. Anybody else have questions or comments, or want to respond to some of those questions? One quick follow-up to the question earlier about professional archeologists and non-professional archeologists digging, my colleague Karen Mudar wants to add that an ARPA permit is necessary for excavations on federal land. Mudar: Unless Park Service staff is leading it. (laughs) Roller: Right. Right. Great. Well, let’s wrap this up. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you for the great questions and comments and really great insight into the sort of complexities and rewards of doing the Urban Archeology Corps programs. Thank you for all the participants for your patience across the expanse of the winter. All the rescheduling and scheduling. I’m so glad to hear from all of you, and to have finally had this webinar. Thanks for everyone listening out there. Please tune in in two weeks, April fourth. Again, we’ll have another webinar on disaster archeology, Park Service response to hurricanes. And we’ve recorded this and we’ll be posting it on the common learning portal in time. So thanks, everyone. Have a great evening. Thanks, Mike! Thank you. Thank you. Roller: Thanks, all. Thanks. Goodbye. Roller: Goodbye. 83:38 [End Webinar.]
Description
UAC, 3/21/2019, ArcheoThursday
Duration
1 hour, 23 minutes, 38 seconds
Credit
NPS
Date Created
03/21/2019
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