CUNY Academic Commons

Severin Fowles and Kaet Heupel The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World Edited by Paul Graves-Brown and Rodney Harrison

I found this weeks’ readings to have a philosophical aspect to them. They were non-traditional and questioned what it means to have physical evidence in a very material reliant field that is a…[Read more]

Graffiti and Racial Insults: The Archaeology of Ethnic Relations in Hawaii by C. Fred Blake

In this article Blake explores the graffiti in Hawaii while focusing on the ethnic/ racial aspect of the graffiti. He categorizes graffiti into 3 attributes. The first being materials and techniques used to convey the message (if there is a message), the…[Read more]

Exploring a Hidden Archive of New York City’s Historic Trash

In this article, Hester states, “Trash is perhaps the greatest currency of archaeology”. It also showed even though many people consider these objects simply garbage, it can depict, preserve and remind people of the origins. This article was very interesting it gave a glimpse of the pas…[Read more]

Resistance to exploitation in attempts to obtain personal liberty and community freedom is a common theme in these three articles. This can be seen in this weeks articles by Meredith Linn, Paul Mullins, and Mark Leone. Exploited and enslaved people use objects as a form of resilience. They kept their traditions alive throughout time and with…[Read more]

The article “The Puerto Rican Yard”, discussed the ways two ethnic groups expressed themselves through the use of objects. These objects were either fixed (places like churches) semi fixed (signs, flags) or non fixed (clothing, mannerisms) The study focused on houses and front yard in Lorain, Ohio. This particular location was inhabited my mai…[Read more]