Construction on Campus and Women in Archaeology
00:00
Alice Lynn McMichael (ALM): This interview is Chapter 3, Part 1 of the Campus Archaeology Program: Oral History with Lynne Goldstein.
Autumn Painter (AP): Topics include construction on campus and women in archaeology. It was recorded on April 23, 2018.
Lynne Goldstein (LG): In terms of construction, one of the issues is that people who do construction at MSU, not IPF, but rather, people who bid on projects and do construction, you know, like Granger and people like that, all of those people have to — and not every single person — but they have to go through this class where they learn how to deal with trees, etc., etc. For a long time, I have wanted us added to that class, but that’s not happened yet, but I think it will because the new head of IPF, Dan Bowman, is much more open to that kind of thing than the former head was. I think he just didn’t want to change anything.
So, anyway, one of the issues is, is that the construction people often just start out negative. That — their notion is that whatever we’re doing, they don’t understand but they know it’s going to hold them up. and in fact, it doesn’t. The only time it holds them up is sometimes we have to say we know there’s something here and let’s see if we can move around where you’re working so that we can get in there before you do it. And usually it’s a simple negotiation. Granger, for example, is very open and very happy to do that. Certain other people are as well.
Where we get into trouble are in some of the smaller contractors. Now, did we talk about the sidewalk?
AP: I believe we did last time.
LG: I think we did.
So, so sometimes you have to, you know, use — not you — the person in charge, the director, has to use their muscle to sort of get people in line. If, if the campus archaeologist or anyone else is threatened by construction people, and that has happened, then what you have to do is immediately go to the vice president for facilities and, and talk to them about it, because they will intervene. And you really have to have intervention at that point. So that’s one of the sort of structural things that we’ve put into place and they’re happy to support us on it.
But one of the things to remember is that to a great extent, and this is untrue anywhere else I know of, to a great extent everything is up to you. Everything is up to the program. Because this is something that no one else has ever done, and so, therefore, what we do is really up to us. When I ask if they want this or that or a particular report, they say well that’s up to you, because they don’t really know what to expect. They don’t know what they should or should not expect. And, so, to a certain extent, it’s good to keep the expectations low, because that’s less work, but to another extent, you know, you want to make sure they know what’s going on. And so that’s why I regularly send out e-mails to people so they know what we’re doing and what’s happening, but you don’t want to go too far and you want to leave it open.
03:26
So one of the big openings we have is in terms of research. So if I know, for example — and research in two ways — well 3 ways. One way is that, if I know that certain projects are coming up, then we do the archival research beforehand and maps and whatever else. We do all of that research before we begin. So if we know that’s going, you know, happening, then we do that. Second kind of research is just things that we are interested in — we being myself, the director, or any of the graduate fellows.
If there is research they are particularly interested in, we try to figure out a way to put it within the structure that we have. And the 3rd way is in terms of undergraduates and, there, the campus archaeologist and the director sort of directs them to specific projects, usually working with artifacts, so that they get the skills of looking things up and doing that sort of thing. That’s the idea there. And that usually works fine. But any kind of research we want to do, we are able to do. So it’s a very flexible thing, and I would hate to see us impose a big structure on it when the beauty of it is that there isn’t one.
ALM: I was just going to ask if there have been any favorite projects or projects stand out to you in terms of these kinds of research from over the years.
LG: Oh, many! Many! So, I really liked the gender work we, we’ve done. I really like the landscape work we’ve done. One of the projects I assigned to a graduate student who is in cultural anthropology was looking at where the center of MSU was. And the reason for that is that, in reading some materials, it turns out that the university has always thought the center of campus is the oldest part of campus, but, of course, people who are students don’t see it that way. So they did this big survey, and it turned out that people thought the center of campus was Farm Lane and Shaw. That that’s what they thought the center — and that’s why they added that weird stuff there, you know, the whatever, the display, and the benches that are out in the sun and the cold and everything, because people said they thought that was the center of campus, so they added that so that.
Those are things that — so it was interesting. So I had her look at where the center was and so, for example, a lot of people see the rock as the center of campus, but you know, the rock wasn’t always there. The rock used to be in the old part of campus. So it was not always where it is now. And, you know, there are some things I’ve suggested that, of course, they haven’t taken up on — not that I didn’t think they were great ideas, but they just didn’t — I think they ought to put a camera in a tree and have it on the rock all the time, because that way we could see what people are doing with the rock. Even if it wasn’t a video, if it was just like taking a picture every hour, even. I think that would be really important, because, technically, you’re supposed to sign up to paint the rock, but only about a quarter of the students do. Most people just go do it.
ALM: Who monitors the rock? Whose is it?
LG: Nobody. Well, Student Services is who you’re supposed to sign up with, but.
So, that was one of my ideas. My other idea was that there is this cool cistern next to the museum, MSU museum, between there and Saints Rest. And we went down there and it was like cool all the time and it was — I could stand up in and most people could stand up in it — and I thought it would be so neat to make it a coffee shop, a great location, really kind of cool, and everybody just laughed and.
(Laughter)
07:48
So, that was another of my great ideas that went nowhere. I mean, there are things like that, but the idea is, the way I viewed campus archaeology from the perspective of construction and what we do and how we go about it, is I have really taken on personally this notion of campus as a laboratory. And I drive around campus on a regular basis looking, looking to see if somebody is doing something that I know about, but also just looking to see what strikes me. I’ll walk around, I’ll drive around, and I do it very regularly to so that I can see what’s going on. And I think that that’s really important, because there are all kinds of research projects that are possible, but you have to, you know, you have to think about them, you have to think about: is this something I personally want to do? Is this something I could get a student interested in doing? What kind of student really needs to do this — should it be a graduate student? Should it be an undergrad?
For graduate student fellows, I’ve always tried to tailor the projects they work on so the that it somehow mirrors their, their research dissertation interests so – not — they can’t ever be a match, but similar. Sometimes that’s possible, sometimes not. But it’s always, there is always some interest. So, for example, there was a student whose dissertation is in Africa and what she really wanted to do was see if she could develop a, a sort of a regular program in the MSU museum that was for families, and so we did that. And, and it was it was successful, but again it was — there was nobody who wanted to continue it.
So it happened for a year. And that’s probably one of the bigger issues is, is what do you do about continuity? Sustainability, not in the sense of, you know, sustaining you know, sustainability of, of the past and so on, but sustainability of the program and of the research. So that’s why I’ve been very selective about what we do.
So that example at the museum, there were several reasons I didn’t want to do it. One of which is that we had had some problems working with a particular person at the museum, and I didn’t, I really didn’t want to do something that was going to make them look good and we would do all the work and pay all the money and, you know, and they would get all the credit. Seemed to me that that was a lose, lose for me.
So I didn’t want to do that. But the main reason I didn’t want to do it is that I knew I wouldn’t have people who would want to continue it. And so, I like to do things that I know we can sustain. So, the gender stuff we, we have been able to sustain. The sustainability stuff we’ve been going in various directions from it, but again, we’ve been able to sustain. The, you know, haunted tours we’ve been able to sustain, but that’s like one night, you know. It’s not such a big deal.
11:01
ALM: Could you tell me a little bit more about these gender projects?
LG: So, one of the questions that came up is, you know, initially, the people on campus were male. The students were all male. But, even from the very beginning, there were always a few women and then in, you know, late 1800’s — after the moral act passed and, and, you know, they got the money finally, and so on — in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, they really developed a women’s program. And so my question was this: Could we see gender in the archaeological record that we excavate? Could we find those women? And the reason I wanted to know that is because, at the time, the women were treated very separately. They had a separate building, they ate separately, they took some classes together, but a lot of classes they took separately. They had their own gym they, they had their own this, they had their own that, you know. And so the question was: could we see that?
And the only place they seemed to be, other than going back and forth the class, was they spent a lot of time at the river. You know, going up, you know, walking along the river, picnicking at the river, doing that — you know, the river was a much more central feature, but you know, we’re talking no cars or anything either. So — and they would ride canoes up and down the river. So, the question was could we see them and so we try to different angles of how to do that. And it wasn’t necessarily terribly successful, but we ended up looking at gender in some different ways. You know, just looking at the landscape, we couldn’t find that female landscape.
But, it showed up elsewhere. So, for example, one of my favorite stories is one of the — is this site we excavated in 2015, which is really interesting, but is, in fact, totally disturbed. So what happened is we had done some shovel testing along the river, just behind the administration building. Found nothing, found nothing, found nothing, and then we found a ton of stuff, but it was a very small area. So I said, you know, “I haven’t a clue what this this, but there was a women’s program thing back there, a building, and,, you know, who knows. So we did the field school there, because it was a confined area and I only had about 10 or 12 students anyway. So that’s where we did it.
So what it turned out to be was — that location was where one of the first heating plants was. And they had, where the administration building is today, and they had pipes and various things that went down to the river. And it was a low spot anyway, and so it was a problem. It was flooding, it was, you know, all of this sort of stuff. So that was an issue there.
Next to the next to that location, behind what’s now the library, sort of partially covered by the library, was the home of Gunson — Thomas Gunson, I think. Anyway Gunson’s home – Gunson was a professor of floriculture. He taught the first floriculture course. But, and so, he was a botanist, but he was also hired by Beale to be in charge of the physical plant — of the of the plants, of the plantings of the campus. So that was his job. He was a very dapper guy and very popular and students all came to visit him and, you know, all of this stuff.
So he and his wife moved here and he had a laboratory which was a greenhouse behind his house. And his wife got very, very ill and he had hired this woman to be a nurse to the, to his wife. Anyway, his wife died in ‘23 I think, something like that, and he ended up marrying the nurse as his second wife. And then they ended up doing a bunch of construction on the house, because they wanted to put electricity and plumbing, and this was in the twenties. And my guess is that the new wife really didn’t want all the old wife stuff.
So Gunson moved the — used the opportunity of remodeling his house to get rid of a lot of the building materials and so he put it in that low spot. Well a lot of her stuff went in there too. So, fancy dishes, fancy little — various kinds of things — went in there. So I think it got used as a dump for remodeling Gunson’s house, so it’s not actually a site in situ, in a way, but it is because it got dumped there. We found even things with the first wife’s initials and stuff, so it really was pretty cool.
So, you know, I mean, I don’t think anything nefarious went on, but I, I just think that, you know, she didn’t want to be reminded completely of her stuff. So, so there was that. But if you looked at the artifacts, they don’t make sense for the students. None of it jives with students. And none of it jived with the women’s building either. That, you know, this was one of the — the women’s program had these houses that they used, older houses that they used to teach women how to keep a house. So, how to set tables, how to do dinner parties, do all that kind of stuff. And so there were several of these practice houses, and it didn’t fit for that either. It was too fancy. It was too, too much different stuff.
So when we realize the whole Gunson thing and then the remodeling, that’s when it made sense. That’s when everything clicked together. So there, you can see gender but of a very different nature and of a very different set of circumstances. So I think that’s really illustrated of, of, of the kinds of processes you see. And so, it gives you a different view on gender too, because it’s, it’s very different than the kind of gendered stuff you would expect to find.
17:48
ALM: Could I ask — and this is maybe changing the subject sooner than you would like to, so fell free to revisit — but one thing that strikes me and campus archaeology and the program is how it has given a number of opportunities to women in archaeology.
LG: Yes.
ALM: And I was wondering if you might be able to comment about, a bit about how this program maybe has an impact on archaeology at large.
LG: Sure. One of the things we do –and this is not gendered, so much — one of the things we do is we train students to do things that they would never have an opportunity to do otherwise. It’s both undergraduates and graduate students. For our undergraduates, they get exposure to not just contract archaeology but analyzing materials, writing reports, doing those sorts of things that they would never have a chance to do as an undergrad, usually.
And in every case where the student wanted to go on in archaeology, they’ve gotten into very good graduate schools. That’s happened almost consistently. It’s very rare — or it’s maybe not as great a student that they didn’t. For graduate students, it’s gotten them jobs. Because, again, they have this experience with social media. they have experience with digital stuff, they have experience with contract stuff, with a lot of public kinds and community kinds of archaeology that you would never get in the course of a regular program. And it’s not that it trains you in that kind of archaeology. It’s doing the campus work you get trained in it in addition to the other thing you’re doing for your research. So that becomes very important and, and women have always felt very comfortable doing it.
And, and the interesting thing there – let me think about how to say this. The interesting thing there is that I have had students from across anthropology asked to be fellows, partially for the money, you know, because you get a good chunk of money and, you know, I don’t know count you hours. But partially — and some people have taken advantage of it and I have axed them after, you know they’re out after a year. But, more importantly, a lot of people have done it to get — and mostly women — to get access to different kinds of experiences and also then using me as a mentor, because their particular situation was such that they were not getting that in in their regular program. I think that’s easy to say that. That they were — not that they’re not in anthropology, there are — but their advisor is not particularly helpful in that regard or that sort of thing. So, I’ve got, there are a group of people that I got that way.
And so that’s been extremely helpful and literally — quite literally — in many cases, people have gotten if, you know, full time jobs because of it. Now, they – and, you know, that’s why the graduate school invests.
21:15
ALM: Could you maybe give us an overview of the kinds of archaeological jobs that people have gotten?
LG: Sure. Okay, so, they’ve gotten — we have people who’ve worked for, this is after getting either a master’s or a Ph.D, we have people who work for the park service. Terry Brock is at Montpelier. Adrian Daggett is working for one of the states, I think.
AP: She just switched, I think, to Florida. She just got a new job.
LG: Okay, and, so a lot of the sort of governmental and other things. But also other kinds of academic positions as well. I have to look at a list to actually come up with where people are, but, but it’s been a variety of different things. And it’s certainly makes people attractive for, for jobs like Montpelier or for park service or that sort of stuff but other things as well, because they have skill — you know, even if you’re not going to use it on your everyday job, you end up — when you do campus archaeology, you end up with new skills and it makes you feel more confident. So I think that makes you more sellable.
I’ll give you another example. One of our undergraduates, Beth Pruitt. Beth is this super, quiet, shy person and she was an undergrad here. And early in the campus program, Beth was working for us and, doing summer work and so on, and we came to a point where whoever it was, was campus archaeologists — I think it might have been Chris Stasi — he had to be gone for some period of time and I had to be gone. I was accessible by phone, but I wasn’t there either. And they were doing this major work that we had to monitor. Absolutely had been monitored. Didn’t have to do digging so much, but we had to monitor it, and we were sure they were going to find something, and we had to stop them, and all of this sort of stuff.
So I had to put Beth on it, because I had nobody else. And I said, “Beth, do you think you can really do this because you have to tell them to stop”? Well, she thought maybe she could and she did a fabulous job. She did great doing all kinds of work, campus archaeology, and because of, in part because of her work with us, she ended up getting into University of Maryland. She got her Ph.D. there under Mark Leone and she now is the point person for public archaeology for the SAA (Society of American Archaeology). So that’s a great example as well.