CUNY Academic Commons

Prior to this class, I had no knowledge of the Weeksville Heritage Center or of the great community that was Weeksville. I along with several other students from England got a chance to watch an informative video on the origins and community understandings of Weeksville. Through the video and small discussions I learned that Weeksville was founded…[Read more]

In “Bodyscapes, Biology, and Heteronormativity”  by Pamela L. Geller, she argues that “ through the use of a biomedical bodyscape, many investigators of ancient bodies unwittingly naturalize cultural values that are in fact modern constructs”. Bodyscape is a term she uses to describe different bodies as they move through space to the micro la…[Read more]

These three articles discuss how prevalent pieces of material culture can provide information about the socio-economic world of its participants in the 19 century.  Chinese Masculinity and Material Culture by Bryan Williams depicts the livelihood (or masculinity) of these Chinese men based on archaeological findings. In this piece he asses the in…[Read more]

Kathryn M. Kuranda highlights the thoughtful and responsible professional practice in cultural resource management (CRM) in her chapter “Studying and Evaluating the Built Environment”. “Cultural resource management operates under international cultural heritage conventions, government policies, laws, ordinances, regulations, procedures, stand…[Read more]

Leone describes Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon as a model prison famous for its architecture. The panopticon is modeled as a multisided, domed building in which all inmates are visible from a central point inside the prison (and or rehabilitation center). The most important aspect of this model is the idea that these inmates will never know at what…[Read more]

“Native American Historical archeology and the trope of authenticity” by Craig Cipolla is an interesting piece that talks about the effects of misusing historical archaeological data to drive colonial narratives and how Historical Archaeological data can also work to reverse those effects. Craig’s research highlights the Brothertown Indians of Wi…[Read more]