Investing in Urban Studies to Ensure Urban Archaeology’s Future: A Response to ‘The Challenges and Opportunities for Mega-infrastructure Projects and Archaeology’

Meredith B Linn

doi:10.5334/pia.441

Abstract

In reading J. J. Carver’s excellent suggestions for how to better enable archaeology and large urban infrastructure projects to progress to mutual benefit, I found myself in enthusiastic agreement with his point that ‘professional working relationships are the most important challenge for archaeology in mega projects’ and that we must convince project directors, engineers, and site teams that archaeology ‘can enhance the value of the project they are building’ (4). This is especially crucial in cities like New York City (NYC), where government protection of cultural heritage is weaker than in London and where the city’s identity is tied more to its future than its past. In future-oriented cities, it is thus necessary to take Carver’s point even further and to engage people involved in all levels of urban planning and development, both at project sites and within the academic programs that train them, to help bring about a cultural shift in attitudes towards the value of archaeology.

Highlights

Linn: Investing in Urban Studies to Ensure Urban Archaeology’s Future tors and using the language of their field are critical to the success of the collaboration (3)
Discovering the concerns of urban studies students and faculty and learning their language has meant learning more about the other disciplines that contribute to urban studies and doing a lot of reading, listening, observing, and conversing
Examples from New York City (NYC) that I have presented to my students range from the more conceptual, like using the Five Points site to denaturalize the construction of class inequalities in the past and present (Reckner 2002), to the more concrete, like showing how the African Burial Ground site mobilized the descendant community and its allies to fight against racism in the present (LaRoche and Blakey 1997)

Summary

Introduction

As an archaeologist and a new professor in Barnard College and Columbia University’s Urban Studies Program in NYC, I have been trying to make archaeology more important to my students and colleagues and a more integral part of the curriculum. Linn: Investing in Urban Studies to Ensure Urban Archaeology’s Future tors and using the language of their field are critical to the success of the collaboration (3).

Results

Conclusion