January 31, 2023
The Narragansett (Providence) Society celebrated International Archaeology Day 2022 by hosting its popular Community Archaeology Day for the first time since 2019. Anna Soifer, President of the Society, shares a full update with us below.
“The AIA Narragansett Society (based in Providence, Rhode Island) has co-hosted a Community Archaeology Day for many years in celebration of International Archaeology Day and Rhode Island Archaeology Month. After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were incredibly excited to once again hold a Community Archaeology Day this past October. Hosted jointly with Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Archaeology Day consisted of multiple events on and around Brown’s campus. At the Joukowsky Institute’s home in Rhode Island Hall, we had an open house where faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and alumni from the Joukowsky Institute, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Classics and the Ancient History Program, and the Public Humanities Program curated tables with displays of artifacts, photos, activities, and more on ancient cultures and archaeological methods. Topics ranged from ancient Egypt to geoarchaeology to Greek and Roman coins, and visitors stayed for a long time, chatting with archaeologists, looking through microscopes, and trying their hands at writing their names in the Cypro-Minoan syllabary. Nearby, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology also held an open day at their Manning Hall location. And last, but certainly not least, the graduate student instructors of Brown’s practical excavation course, the Archaeology of College Hill, along with their students, hosted an open excavation day at their site, the late 19th/early 20th century Sack Family House on the grounds of the Moses Brown School. Here, members of the public enjoyed getting their hands dirty and actually excavating. While we are not abandoning the online engagement necessitated by the pandemic (for instance, we actively participated in the AIA’s IAD tweetathon), it was wonderful to return to in-person events and the energy and enthusiasm generated by sharing archaeology with our community face-to-face!”
Congratulations to the Narragansett Society for hosting such a successful event. We hope the fun continues this October for International Archaeology Day 2023!
