Extra! Extra! Read All About It: Newspaper Archives as Archaeological Site Survey

Abstract

Relative to other historic documents, newspapers have received little attention from researchers as a source of archaeological data. Now that many historic newspapers have been digitized and placed online, this traditionally underutilized resource has the potential to yield new information about archaeological sites, especially those in heavily developed urban areas where sites are inaccessible or have been destroyed. In this article, a methodology is proposed by which archived newspapers might be searched for data about archaeological sites. A case study using newspapers from Allen County, Indiana and its principal city, Fort Wayne, demonstrates the utility of the methodology by producing evidence about many previously unrecorded archaeological sites.