Location:
Season: August 17, 2025 to August 23, 2025
Session Dates: 8/17/25 - 8/23/25
Deadline Type: Rolling
Website: https://www.hurricaneisland.net/archaeology
Program Type:
Field School
RPA Certified:
No
Project Director:
Jeffrey L. Benjamin, PhD
Project Description:
The remains of late nineteenth century granite mining and finishing operations at Hurricane Island, Maine, are a testament to a very recent instance of humans’ enduring relationship with stone. In 1870 the island was transformed into a “company town” providing finished granite structural and architectural components for buildings and monuments across the United States. Several millennia earlier, coastal tribes such as the Micmac and Abenaki — using stone tools — fished and hunted in the same region where Maine’s granite business was later active, including the works at Hurricane Island. This transition allows us to consider the legacy of human beings as stone-working beings across time, and how the many varieties and processes involved in stone quarrying and refinement inform sociality and social structures, such as trade, consumption and population. Taking an historical-ecological approach, this summer’s archaeological field program will embrace the challenge of looking at humans’ relation with stone and associated materials across millennia, as made manifest by the remains at Hurricane Island.
In this five day course, students will become familiar with the archaeological history of granite production and Wabanaki presence at Hurricane Island as well as the wider coastal environment. We will continue to survey and map the island’s many remaining anthropogenic features, with a particular emphasis upon questions pertaining to public health. We will also conduct excavation work on selected locations in order to determine the extent of Wabanaki presence, and also to gain a more nuanced understanding of the lives and habits of the significant granite working population which peaked in the late 1800’s, and which has limited historical documentation.
Jeffrey Benjamin, PhD., Anthropology, Columbia University, NYC. M.S. Industrial Archaeology. Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI.
Ylva Sjöstrand, PhD., Archaeology, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Ivy Clark, B.A., Archaeology, cum laude. University of Evansville, IN. Director, Newburgh Museum, Newburgh, Indiana.
Period(s) of Occupation: Prehistoric, historic
Notes:
For questions about course details, please contact Jeff Benjamin at "jlb2289@columbia.edu"
Project Size: 1-24 participants
Room and Board Arrangements:
$1250
