Public Lecture, Discussion, and Interactive Online Opportunity - January 20th, 2018

Join Schlitz Audubon conservation director Marc White and me at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center in Bayside, WI on January 20th for a discussion of preliminary findings from archaeological investigations of their lakeside property on Lake Michigan. This in-person lecture and discussion is part of a collaboration between the School of Continuing and Online Learning at Cardinal Stritch University and Schlitz Audubon Nature Center.

The in-person lecture will be supported by interactive online materials that will go live on January 6, 2018. Online registration is optional and you do not need to participate online in order to attend in person. To participate in the online enrichment, visit online.stritch.edu/academics/courses and select the red 'community partners' tab. The discussion will continue online until February 20th, 2018.

Schlitz Audubon Nature Center is located at 1111 Brown Deer Road, Bayside (Milwaukee County), Wisconsin, 53217. The lecture is free for students showing valid IDs, for adults paying admission to or members of  Schlitz Audubon Nature Center.

Come out, learn, and join the conversation about local history and ecology!

Site Found! Schlitz Audubon Nature Center / Fox Point (Milwaukee), Wisconsin

Over the summer and into the autumn, Dr. Pacifico, the School of Continuing and Online Learning (SCOL), and the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center (SANC) explored the potential for a partnership.

As of October 27th we're going to move forward exploring the possibility of future and sustained archaeological research on their property as a partnership between SANC, SCOL, and MCAP.

The SANC lakeside property in Fox Point is known as the former pastureland for the Schlitz Brewing Company draft horses. However, previous to the property's acquisition by Schlitz at the end of the 19th century, the property was the site of several farmsteads settled by European immigrants from areas now part of Germany and the Netherlands. Documentary and archaeological excavation will tell us much about life for the early settlers of this area and the founding of Milwaukee.

Of course, this area was previously settled by American Indian people. The Schlitz Audubon Nature Center site is reported to have been the location of scattered campsites, villages, and workshops and so archaeological investigation on the property could extend our knowledge of local history and original residents even further into the past.

A shovel in search of a site...

The Milwaukee Community Archaeological Project (MCAP) has launched as a collaboration between Dr. David Pacifico, Cardinal Stritch University's School of Continuing and Online Learning, and Shorewood High School. We are also in talks with other community groups here on the North Shore of Milwaukee. While we have a couple of sites identified as possible dig sites for Summer 2018 and Summer 2019, we've yet to determine exactly where we'll dig.

One of the main objectives, though, is to begin detailing a long-term history of the environmental and social consequences of urbanism in Southeastern Wisconsin. A practical objective is to involve local community groups in the research so as to better understand diverse stakeholders' interests in archaeology and so as to practice an archaeology that is locally-appropriate and socially-meaningful.

See you at the American Anthropological Association's Annual Meeting!

Shorewood High School teacher Debra Schwinn and I will be presenting our experiences organizing this project at the 116th Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Washington, DC.

Debra is beginning a Master's program in Anthropology at UW-Milwaukee, and she'll be doing what I did as a graduate student: learning to do archaeology while serving as the community liaison to the project.

Check out our paper abstract for the conference:

Who Even Cares? Community Archaeology on Milwaukee’s North Shore 

 A Paper Proposal for the Session 

Collaborative, Public and Political: Archaeology in 2017 and Beyond 

 at 

 Anthropology Matters: the 116th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association 

Washington, DC, November 29-December 3, 2017 

by

  David Pacifico, PhD and Debra Schwinn 

This paper relates our experiences in the early stages of developing a community archaeological project on Milwaukee’s North Shore: the Milwaukee Community Archaeology Project North Shore component (MCAP-NS). We characterize local stakeholders and describe the archaeological interests expressed by people living on Milwaukee’s North Shore. The archaeological project examines identity, urbanism, and environmental change from the early holocene to the present. As a community archaeology project, MCAP-NS aims to engage robustly with a diverse stakeholders in order to maximize the value of archaeological research. But what are the interests, potentials, and obstacles to this kind of archaeology in the social context of a non-marginalized population? The dominant models for developing community archaeology emerge from descendent-based models of archaeological heritage or anti-colonial archaeological praxes of engaging marginalized and minority populations. These are essential and inspiring approaches to community archaeology. They may also benefit from inherent public interest because archaeological research holds the promise of cultural validation for marginalized groups. But what happens when local communities are neither primarily indigenous nor minorities? In what ways do non-marginalized local communities express interest in archaeological science, archaeological remains, and cultural heritage more generally? For archaeology to have a broad and holistic public value it is essential to gather data on, characterize, compare, and contrast public interest among, collaborative methods for, and practical experiences with collaborating with all ranges of communities.