Newport, Rhode Island

The Fiske Center has been working collaboratively with Salve Regina University on archaeological investigation in Newport, Rhode Island. The research theme of the project is “Interpreting the Lives of Merchants in Eighteenth-Century Newport,” with a focus on the role of mercantile capital in shaping the urban landscape and the city’s social structures of race, class, and gender during the colonial period. During the summer of 2009 and the two schools offered a joint fieldschool at two sites in Newport, both homes of prominent merchants. Through daily archaeological fieldwork and laboratory analysis students learned the process of excavation, field recording, sample collection, and basic artifact analysis in historical archaeology. The course included an explicit focus on urban environmental archaeology, with specialized sampling for recovery of plant, animal, insect and parasite remains to study health, diet, and the changing urban landscape.

To see a series of pictures from Summer 2009 Click Here