Dr. Bernard Means: ” When Americans Dug Their Past: Doing Archaeology During the Great Depression” @ Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, millions of Americans lost their jobs, lost their homes, and lost all hope as the unrelenting forces of the Great Depression affected all levels of society, year after dreary year. Taking office in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met his pledge of a New Deal for America by swiftly enacting ambitious federal work relief programs. People’s faith in their nation was restored as they built roads, schools. airports, and even zoos–creating an infrastructure that still supports our nation today.
These New Deal programs also fundamentally transformed American archaeology. Work relief archaeologists labored across most of the lower 48 states, peeling back layers of soil, and revealing startling secrets of the country’s past absent from standard history books. Ordinary men and women from all walks of life–farmers, railroad workers, coal miners, shop keepers, secretaries, and executives–undertook the extraordinary task of excavating places of national significance, such as at Jamestown, Daniel Boone’s birthplace, and French and Indian Forts. Of greater significance, work relief archaeologists also explored and uncovered the camp sites, villages, towns, and mounds of then little known pre-European heritage of American Indians.
This event is part of the College of Arts and Sciences’ semester-long initiative, “Themester 2015: @Work: The Nature of Labor on a Changing World.” Themester is a program that combines academic courses, public lectures and exhibits, film showings and other events and is intended to engage students and the entire community in a collective learning experience about a timely, even urgent, issue.