Integrating Community Service Learning into the Murray State University Archaeology
Program
Lara K. Homsey, Anthony L. Ortmann, and Kit W. Wesler
Abstract
Since 2008, Murray State University (MSU) archaeology faculty in the Geosciences Department have begun to implement community service learning into their archaeology curriculum. Community service learning allows students to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to real-world problems while simultaneously addressing needs within their local and regional community. At MSU, service learning projects implemented in the archaeology curriculum include conducting phase I cultural resources inventories for the City of Murray, conducting geophysical exploration of unmarked cemetery graves for the City of Cadiz, and bundling human remains for reburial at Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site. This paper describes these initiatives and evaluates their positive effect on student learning, civic engagement, and community awareness; student-faculty interaction with public stakeholders; and public awareness and perception of archaeological resources.
Introduction
Community Service Learning (CSL) is defined as “an
educational activity, program, or curriculum that seeks to promote student
learning through experiences associated with…community service” (Schine
1997:vii-iv). Among the expected outcomes of CSL are service provided to a
community in need, improved student learning and commitment to civic
participation, and active reflection of that participation (Howard 2003:3).
Most practitioners view CSL as a cooperative effort to address real-world
problems via the practice of contextualized knowledge learned in the
traditional classroom, with the ultimate goal being the empowerment of both
students and their community partners.
Because archaeology has traditionally been an applied
field, it would seem that it is ideally suited to integrating service learning
into what is already an experientially learned field. And yet, as Nassaney
(2010) has recently noted, archaeological pedagogy has changed little since the
1960s. Such stasis is surprising given some of the significant changes that the
field has undergone since this time, including influential preservation
legislation such as the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), widespread
growth in the nonacademic sector of cultural resource management, and the
emergence of public archaeology programs.
The need for pedagogical reform within the discipline
has received significant attention in the last decade. Fagan (2002:258) has
argued that it is no longer acceptable “for an archaeologist to be trained in
purely academic and fieldwork skills.”
In Teaching Archaeology in the
Twenty-first Century, Bender and Smith (2000) called for professional
archaeologists to reevaluate the college curriculum in which we train students
to enter the profession. The volume offers numerous avenues for redirecting curricula,
but despite archaeology’s natural fit, CSL is not among them. Nassaney and
Levine’s (2010) recent volume Archaeology
and Community Service Learning seeks to remedy this oversight and provides
numerous case studies detailing both the benefits and the challenges to
integrating service learning in archaeological curricula. This paper seeks to add to the emerging
literature on this topic by presenting three cases studies undertaken by the
archaeology faculty at Murray State University. The case studies vary widely in
their scope and context, but all fit nicely into the Community Service Learning
schema.
Background—the origins of Service
Learning in American Collegiate Curricula
While the roots of modern service learning can be
traced back to the heightened civic consciousness associated with the Civil
Rights and Anti-war movements of the 1960s, Community Service Learning as an
educational initiative has, for the most part, only been institutionalized
since the 1980s (Nassaney 2010; McLaughlin 2010; Shackel 2010). Since then,
administrators have encouraged the development of service learning curricula at
both small liberal arts colleges and large state universities. Today, the
precedent for CSL is well enough established that offices and centers dedicated
solely to CSL have been created at many institutions. These offices offer
assistance to faculty in developing community service options, identifying
community partners, and establishing a project. At Murray State University
(MSU), the Center for Service Learning and Civic Engagement (SLCE), operated by
the MSU Regional Outreach program, fulfills these roles (MSU 2010). In addition to providing logistical support,
the office maintains a Blackboard site that links faculty to national CSL
resources and provides curriculum tools such as syllabus templates and
guidelines for developing service-learning based courses. MSU’s support for
service learning also includes sponsoring a “Service Learning Mentor of the
Year” award, as well as a Service Learning certificate for students completing
12 or more credit hours in courses with service learning designations.
While the logistical and pedagogical support of a
university-sponsored office is helpful, we want to emphasize that it is not
essential for creating or conducting a CSL project. Only one of the examples discussed below (ARC
350) has an official MSU Service Learning designation and involved
collaboration with the SLCE. A second
example (ARC 556) is not designated as a Service Learning course at MSU, but
because the class is focused on teaching students how to use geophysical
equipment, it simply makes sense to conduct fieldwork as part of the course
requirements. In this case, the instructor (Ortmann) did not have to seek out a
community partner. Rather, the community
approached him with a need that happened to correspond with the timing of the
class. Our third case study involves
service learning that is not part of a course at all, but rather volunteer work
by student members of the Geosciences Club.
(At MSU, the archaeology program is subsumed within the Geosciences
Department. Students seeking employment in archaeological professions select to
major in the Geoarchaeology option. The Geosciences Club consists of
Geoarchaeology students as well as students majoring in other options.) We believe that the variety of projects
presented here will demonstrate the diverse forms that CSL can take in
university education in general, and archaeological education in particular.
MSU Service Learning Projects
Phase I Archaeological Surveys for the
City of Murray and Calloway County Residents
ARC 350, Public Archaeology, has been a designated
service learning course at Murray State University since 2008. Originally titled “Contract Archaeology,” the
course was reorganized and re-titled as “Public Archaeology” to emphasize that
all modern cultural resource management work derives from legislation rooted in
the idea that cultural resources are public resources and that CRM can play a
crucial role in increasing public understanding of, and stewardship for, these cultural
resources. To this end, the course is
centered on a Phase I archaeological survey in which the students participate
cooperatively in the entire project, beginning with the development of a scope
of work and budget; to the background review, site check, field work, map
preparation, artifact analysis; and ending with preparation of a state site
form and a technical report of investigations submitted to the Office of State
Archaeology (OSA) and the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), respectively. There is very little traditional lecturing
involved since the course is hands-on and requires group work for most of the
semester, in addition to several weekends of fieldwork. At each stage of the survey, class discussion
and short lectures provide students with background in cultural resource
legislation; the Section 106 review process; procedural elements of a Phase I
survey; and, last, but definitely not least, engaging the public and other
relevant communities.
In 2008, the lead author and six students in the ARC
350 course undertook a Phase I survey for a parcel of land owned by the City of
Murray that was under consideration for development of a fire sub-station
(Homsey et al. 2008) (Figure 1).
Figure 1. North-facing view of 2008 Phase I survey
project area (a), view of feature #1 in project area (b), ARC 350 student
recording shovel test pit (c), and several members of the ARC 350 class (d).
Because they received a federal grant to develop the
sub-station, the City was required to conduct a cultural resource assessment.
The City contacted the archaeology faculty at MSU to inquire about contracting
for these services. Fortuitously, the
request came at the start of a semester in which ARC 350 was being taught; the
City readily agreed to allow the ARC 350 class to conduct the survey as a
service project rather than as a traditional consulting contract. During the
survey, we identified features representing several structures and a light
scatter of modern brick and whiteware (Homsey et al. 2008). Surprisingly, we could find no record of a
structure, either through a deed search at the Calloway County Courthouse
property office, or through a review of available aerial photography. As a result, students interviewed numerous
community stakeholders including members of the Fire Company and local
residents in an attempt to identify and date the structures. (Interviews with local residents eventually
determined that these were ephemeral structures in existence for only two-three
years and constructed sometime after 1960, making them too young to constitute
a historic property and therefore ineligible for the NRHP [Homsey et al.
2008].) This process was infinitely more valuable to the students than a
traditional lecture in which they are passively told that Phase I projects can
quickly become complicated and even multidisciplinary. For their final project in the course,
students worked as a team to submit a technical report of investigations to the
SHPO (Homsey et al. 2008) and to present a poster at Murray State University’s
annual Scholar’s Week event (Figure
2).
In 2010, the ARC 350 class again worked with the City
of Murray to survey a second parcel of land also under consideration for the
same fire sub-station discussed above (Homsey et al. 2010). While the students worked on this project, a
call came in from the owner of a local private golf course who had
inadvertently encountered cultural materials while renovating one of the
holes. While the land was privately
owned and therefore did not require a federally mandated cultural resource
assessment, the owner asked us to evaluate the construction area because his
family had lived on the land for generations.
He happily agreed to allow the students to work on it as part of their
service learning effort. He was particularly interested in the artifacts, as
his family’s oral history told of a homestead on the far edge of the golf
course. But because no structure
remained, many in his family dismissed the claim. The results of a surface
collection confirmed the presence of a domestic homestead, as well as an
underlying prehistoric lithic scatter.
This project allowed the students to compare and
contrast federally mandated projects to non-mandated projects. Even more importantly, it allowed students to
interact with and educate the public, not just in the history of a single
family, but also on the prehistory of the region. The family appeared
astonished to learn that “real Indians” (the family’s term) once lived in the
area. While this reaction was somewhat
amusing to our class, it highlighted the need to educate the public about the
human past. The land owner graciously
donated the recovered artifacts to MSU to use as an educational collection and
asked that we conduct additional archaeological survey when the family
continues renovation of the adjacent portions of the golf course. Even more satisfying, the family is now
considering recording the site with OSA by filing a state site form, despite
initial hesitation to do so for the mistaken fear of losing their family
business. As in 2008, students worked
together to submit a letter report to the family and present a poster at the
2010 MSU Scholar’s Week (Figure
3).
Geophysical Evaluation of the City of
Cadiz East End Cemetery
In 2007 the MSU Department of Geosciences purchased a
magnetic gradiometer and a ground penetrating radar (GPR) unit for use as
research and teaching instruments. In an
effort to incorporate these instruments into the teaching curriculum at MSU, an
existing course focusing on the application of remote sensing techniques in
archaeological research (ARC 556) was restructured to focus exclusively on the
application of geophysical surveying in archaeology. The increasing application of specialized
methods in archaeological research, such as geophysical surveying, has
stimulated a need to provide students with the knowledge and skills to
understand these complex techniques and to learn to apply them
appropriately. As a result, ARC 556 was
restructured to provide students an understanding of the physical principles on
which geophysical surveying instruments operate, as well as hands-on training
conducting geophysical surveys and interpreting the resulting data.
In 2010, members of the Cadiz (Kentucky) Renaissance
on Main program along with Cadiz Mayor Lyn Bailey contacted the MSU Department
of Geosciences and offered to contract the university to conduct a ground
penetrating radar survey at the city’s East End Cemetery. The City of Cadiz sought to identify the
locations of possible unmarked graves so that a permanent monument could be
erected to memorialize them. Their historical
research on East End Cemetery revealed the names of at least 45 individuals who
were buried in the cemetery but whose grave markers were lost, moved, or never
emplaced. Some of these burials date as early as the mid-19th
century. Rather than contracting MSU to
conduct the survey, the members of the Cadiz Renaissance on Main program agreed
to allow students enrolled in the geophysical surveying course to conduct the
research as part of a service project (Ortmann 2010).
East End Cemetery in Cadiz covers an area of
approximately 4.5 hectares. Near the
center of the cemetery are several areas that are nearly devoid of grave
markers. In consultation with members of
the Cadiz Renaissance on Main program, Ortmann and his students selected two
separate areas for ground penetrating radar surveying. The lack of grave markers, coupled with the
central location of the plots, suggested these areas held the highest
probability of containing unmarked graves.
Under Ortmann’s supervision, the ARC 556 students
surveyed the two portions of the cemetery with a ground penetrating radar unit
equipped with a 400 MHz antenna (Figure 4).
A total of 21 potential unmarked graves were identified during the
survey. The survey also revealed that
the area originally presumed to have the highest probability of containing
unmarked graves only contained one possible unmarked grave. The other 20 potential unmarked graves were
surprisingly discovered in a portion of the survey area that was situated along
the upper slope of a steep hill, and was originally considered to have a lower
probability of containing unmarked graves.
After the survey was completed, the students processed and analyzed the
data and helped prepare the final report in consultation with the course
instructor. The final report was then
submitted to the city of Cadiz and members of the Cadiz Renaissance on Main
program (Ortmann 2010).
This project provided students with a better
understanding of geophysical surveying in particular and public archaeology in
general. It afforded students the
opportunity to collect and analyze geophysical data and to present these data
to non-specialists. Through this
valuable learning experience, the students provided a beneficial service to a
local community.
Figure 4. Field images of ARC 556 students surveying
the Cadiz East End Cemetery.
Reburial of Human Remains at Wickliffe
Mounds
The Geosciences (GSC) Club is a student organization
open to all students interested in the varied subjects taught in MSU’s
Geosciences Department. Since August,
2009, GSC Club students have been involved in preparing human remains from the
Mississippi-period (ca. AD 1100-1350) Wickliffe Mounds site (15Ba4) for on-site
reburial (Figure 5; see also Figure 3).
Figure 5. Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site (a),
former cemetery exhibit building and present reburial site of the 1930s King
and 1980s-2000s WMRC excavations (b), MSU students bundling burials (c); and
Dr. Robert Corruccini (SIU) speaking to SIU, SEMO, and MSU students (d).
The Wickliffe site was first excavated in the 1930s by
an amateur archaeologist, Fain W. King, in order to create a tourist attraction. (For a detailed account and background on Wickliffe
research, see Wesler [2001]). King
uncovered a large portion of a cemetery, built a shelter over the exposed
remains as the centerpiece of his tourist attraction, and also excavated human
remains in other parts of the site. When
MSU accepted the site as a donation in 1983, creating the Wickliffe Mounds
Research Center (WMRC), the exposed cemetery apparently had changed little
since King’s time.
WMRC researchers, however, realized quickly that
King’s ostensibly in-situ cemetery was in fact partly staged. As efforts to document the site and cemetery
continued through the 1980s and 1990s, the WMRC engaged in discussions with
representatives of a number of Native American groups about the ethics of
displaying human remains and the violation of Native Americans’ traditional
respect for their ancestors. Although
the Mississippian occupants of the Wickliffe site cannot be traced to a known
group of descendants, the WMRC agreed that these medieval-period ancestors
should be treated with more respect, and that all human remains should be
removed from public display.
By the mid-1990s, several developments had affected
the situation. NAGPRA had become
law. Hugh Matternes (2000) had completed
an analysis of the human remains removed from the cemetery. The WMRC had agreed that the ultimate
disposition of the human remains should be reburial on site, and had
established a policy of documentation without removal of additional burials
discovered through ongoing research. The
Intertribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma had designated the
Chickasaw as the lead tribe for consultation about reburial, because the
Chickasaw were the last recognized claimants to far western Kentucky when the
United States acquired the land in the Jackson Purchase of 1818. There, however, progress towards reburial
stalled.
In 2004, the Wickliffe site changed ownership again,
becoming the Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site (WMSHS). Kentucky State Parks leaders agreed to honor
the WMRC promise to rebury the Wickliffe ancestors. They renewed consultation with the Chickasaw
Nation, whose representatives agreed that reburial on site would be appropriate
and also would avoid the question of repatriation, since no individuals would
be removed from the grounds where their families had interred them.
WMSHS and the Chickasaw Nation jointly asked the help
of the MSU archaeology program to prepare the ancestral remains for reburial. During the fall and spring semesters from
August 2009 until November 2011, GSC Club members devoted one Saturday per
month to preparing the Wickliffe human remains for reburial (Figure 5b, c, d).
Student volunteers from Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO), organized
by Dr. Carol Morrow, and doctoral students in biological anthropology from
Southern Illinois University (SIU), under the direction of Dr. Robert
Corruccini, also travelled to Wickliffe to help.
Following a protocol established in consultation with
Chickasaw Nation representatives, each set of remains (identified by burial
number or other provenience such as feature or square-and-level) was arranged
on a cotton cloth and photographed. The
participants verified or corrected the counts of specimens from the collection
catalogue, and recorded age, sex, MNI and other data (e.g., evidence of
trauma). Each set of remains was then
bundled in unbleached muslin and tied with cotton string. Each bundle contained a plastic tag recording
the burial number or other provenience, and each was labeled with ink on the
outside of the bundle.
The bundled remains formed two groups, those from the
cemetery and those from elsewhere on the site.
Remains from both the 1930s King and the 1980s-2000s WMRC excavations
were included. In June, 2011, the Mound
C cemetery remains were reburied under the supervision of Chickasaw Nation
representatives. Each bundle was placed
as close as possible to its original location as documented in WMRC excavation
records. The WMSHS removed the former
exhibit building and restored the mound.
Parks personnel, Chickasaw Nation representatives, volunteers and
students completed the reburial of the second group of remains (those from
elsewhere on the site) in a previously-excavated area in late February, 2012. Representatives of the Kentucky Heritage
Council observed both events, and both were conducted under permit from the
Office of State Archaeology.
A total of 33 volunteers dedicated more than 900
person-hours to this project. MSU
students have the satisfaction of knowing that they contributed to the
resolution of a situation created nearly 80 years ago, in a time when
archaeological ethics and practice were quite different from today. They helped to resolve a conflict between
Native American and archaeological perspectives about the relationship of the
present to the past, and to reconcile the principles of anthropology, which
puts the people we study first, and archaeology, which puts sites and
collections first. They aided the
WMSHS’s responsible management of the Wickliffe site in a way that will
contribute to public education about Native Americans and archaeology for the
foreseeable future as the park develops interpretation of the changed exhibits
and landscape for visitors. They helped
the Chickasaw Nation fulfill obligations of respect to the ancestors. They learned first-hand that archaeology is
both scientific and humanistic.
Discussion
In all three of the CSL projects described above,
students actively collaborated with their teachers, each other, and community
members within the project frameworks. Such collaborative research raised
important ethical issues pertaining to representation, ownership, preservation,
and stewardship (Nassaney 2010). In a
traditional classroom such ethical issues can be raised, but learning shifts
from passive to active when students discover these issues themselves through
the course of their engagement in various aspects of the project and their
interaction with community members. As
Nassaney (2010:16) notes, students are challenged to think about why sites are
threatened, how sites can be protected, and whose stories get preserved in the
process. The collaborative nature of CSL
fundamentally alters the traditional teacher-student relationship since
emphasis is shifted from passive teaching to active learning. It also allows students to realize that
learning occurs not just in the classroom from a teacher, but in the real world
from non-academics including local landowners, residents, municipal leaders and
workers, and indigenous communities, to name a few.
The development of a designated Service Learning
course or a CSL project, while clearly beneficial to students and communities,
is not without its challenges. A CSL
project requires, first and foremost, a commitment of time and energy from both
students and faculty. Since these
projects typically involve fieldwork, data analysis, and engagement with
community members, a large portion of the work must be conducted outside of the
classroom. A second challenge for CSL
projects occurring as part of a university course is that the instructor must
be able to change the project as unanticipated circumstances dictate; the
course cannot be planned or structured in any great detail but rather must be
fluid in order to adapt to the nature of the project.
Another barrier to developing such courses is that the
academic rewards of tenure and promotion are often based primarily on research
and publication rather than on innovative teaching and community service
(Baugher 2010; Nyden 2003). In regards
to the latter point, it is important to note that research and service learning
need not be viewed as mutually exclusive.
Indeed, recent studies have shown that research, teaching, and outreach
can and should be integrated (e.g.,
Baugher 2007, 2010; Nyden 2003; Zlotkowski 1999). Service learning is ideally
suited to this integrated approach provided the community is involved in the
research project from the beginning. While the case studies presented here were
not specifically designed to integrate research into the project, there are
many recent excellent examples in which CSL has successfully been integrated
into ongoing research programs (e.g., Chilton and Hart 2010; Levine and Delle
2010; Mendoza 2010; Thacker 2010).
Despite these challenges, we feel that the benefits of
CSL efforts far outweigh the difficulties in developing them. For students, applying what they are learning
to a real project clearly makes them feel like emerging professionals in the
discipline. Students participating in the projects described here demonstrated
genuine enthusiasm for all of the activities associated with the projects.
Unlike the traditional classroom, every student engaged in the project. In an attempt to quantify some of these
subjective observations, students exiting ARC 350 completed an anonymous survey
to rate various aspects of the course on a scale of 1 (very poor) to 5
(excellent) (Table 1). In response to
the question “the [CSL] project enhanced student learning and interest in
subject material,” 100% of students responded with a 4 or a 5. In response to the question “the project
helped me identify a need in the community,” 100% of students responded with a 4
or a 5. These responses quantitatively
confirm our observation of student behavior.
From a more practical perspective, students gained confidence in field
techniques and course content. In
response to the questions “the project helped me gain practical hands-on
skills” and “I feel better prepared for a career in archaeology/CRM,” 100% of
students responded with a 4 or a 5. ARC
350 students additionally submitted a portfolio at the end of the semester,
containing all their assignments pertaining to the project, their field notes,
and a personal reflection essay. One
student wrote: “as an undergrad, field experiences are often limited and it was
valuable to [me] to handle an actual project…we were able to participate in
every step of the process which gave me an idea what our future careers could
possibly be like.”
From a teaching point of view, being able to draw on
the experiences students gain during their service learning projects helps to
reinforce new concepts in subsequent classes because the students acquire new
knowledge more intuitively than if they had not participated in the
projects. Most importantly, these
projects help to humanize the discipline.
Unlike cultural anthropology students, archaeology students can only see
the cultures they study through the lens of artifacts. It is easy for new archaeologists to focus
solely on the artifacts, forgetting that the artifacts themselves are not
people, but rather reflect a people’s culture—in effect, make them real. Students participating in the Wickliffe
reburial project exemplify this well; they no longer view the Wickliffe remains
as faceless individuals but instead as members of a living community. Several
student participants were so influenced by this experience that they have
pledged to continue the project by preparing additional remains (housed at MSU)
for further consultation with interested Native American representatives. Understanding why they are undertaking the
project and what it means to the Native Americans descended from that community
puts a human face to the remains that is not otherwise easily gained.