Archaeology In and Of Chicago

The 1893 World’s Fair, the Charnley House, and the Future of Urban Archaeology - Speaker: Dr. Rebecca Graff 

(early start at 2:30pm!) 

On September 29, Dr. Rebecca Graff, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lake Forest College, opens our 2019-2020 lecture season (at 2:30pm) with an intriguing and fresh look at “what lies beneath” our very local feet.

Drawing from her upcoming book, Disposing of Modernity: The Archaeology of Garbage and Consumerism During Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair (University Press of Florida and Society for Historical Archaeology/SHA, Fall 2020), Dr. Graff will introduce her research project centered on excavations at Jackson Park, the former site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and at the Charnley-Persky House, an 1892 Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home on Chicago’s Gold Coast. Based upon archaeological and archival research on the Fair’s ephemeral Ohio Building and a historic artifact midden at the Charnley-Persky House, this talk will engage with a critical period in the nation’s history to address the ambivalent reactions to the changing world of turn-of-the-twentieth-century urban America. 

Both the Chicago Fair and the Charnley House showed the transformative potential of new forms and technologies for daily life, many of which are still materially present. The talk will cover topics including the history of world’s fairs and expositions, the planning of the Chicago Fair, the Charnley House’s architecture and aesthetics, and how fairs created markets for new products and how the public constituted themselves as modern subjects by consuming them. It will conclude with Jackson Park’s current reappearance on the world stage as the future home of the Obama Presidential Center, and a look toward at-risk archaeological sites and the place of archaeology for Chicagoans today.

Material serving as the basis  of her forthcoming book earned Dr. Graff the 2013 Kathleen Kirk Gilmore Dissertation Award from the Society for Historical Archaeology. 

Dr. Graff received her BA in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA and PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. 

As an historical archaeologist with research interests in the 19th- and 20th-Century urban United States, she explores the relationship between temporality and modernity, memory and material culture, and contemporary heritage and nostalgic consumption through archaeological and archival research. She has excavated at sites in Israel, Honduras, France, the Bahamas, New Orleans, San Francisco, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and Chicago. 

Dr. Graff has directed excavations in several sites in Chicago as undergraduate archaeological field schools for the University of Chicago, DePaul University, and Lake Forest College at sites including the Gray-Cloud House and Mecca Flats. She is currently excavating the former site of an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lake Forest with her undergraduate students.

We look forward to her presentation opening our lecture series on September 29. 

PLEASE NOTE:  Our meeting will begin ONE HOUR EARLIER THAN USUAL, with social hour at 2:00pm, and speaker beginning at 2:30pm.

Summer Safaris 2019

Members went to The Art Institute Exhibit on Peru and Northwestern’s on Africa 

Summer safari participants enjoy viewing Peruvian textiles exhibit
led by Ray Young at The Art Institute of Chicago - photo by Matt Stelton

“Super/Natural: Textiles in the Andes” at The Art Institute 

Up-close examination of textiles from several on display in The Art Institute of Chicago special exhibition Super/Natural: Textiles in the Andes offered a unique opportunity for exploration of Peru’s Pre-Columbian cultures. The exhibition was on display February 23–June 16, 2019. Our group attended on June 13. What made the Safari special was Ray Young’s personal guided tour. Available from Amazon is a dazzling catalog.

“Caravans of Gold” Exhibit at Northwestern University’s Block Museum in Evanston.

The subtitle of the exhibit, Fragments of Time, accurately described the pieces of ceramics, textiles, glass and gold left across the Saharan Desert by caravans of camels during medieval times. CAS members enjoyed viewing the exhibit individually. Let us know what you think of our safaris.

The Morton Site: New Discoveries…..More Questions!

Provided by May Speaker Nicole Marie “Nikki” Klarmann, MA

The Morton site is a sprawling, loosely organized village site two miles upriver from Dickson

Mounds. It was named after its former owner, Joy Morton of Morton Salt, who had a hunting lodge on the property in the 1930s. The site was occupied during the 14th century ACE by Middle Mississippian people with southern affiliations and Oneota people of northwestern origin. Our May speaker addressed Community, Household & Landscape: Examining Spatial Structure for Evidence of Integration at the Morton Village Site, Fulton County, Illinois.

One aspect of the joint Dickson Mounds/ Michigan State University project was to determine the relationship between these two ethnic groups. Speaker Nicole Marie “Nikki” Klarmann’s role in the multi-faceted project was to examine the architectural remains for clues to the nature of the relationships, and degree of coalescence. The site was subjected to a magnetometry survey to locate the buried house floors and storage pits without excavation. In some cases, the indicated building locations were subjected to test excavation or “ground truthing” to test the validity of the magnetometer readings.

Since the Middle Mississippians placed their wall posts in trenches and the Oneota people did not, it was possible to determine who constructed particular structures. When Klarmann’s architectural research is combined with that of others examining different aspects of the archaeological record, such as stone tools and weapons, ceramics and animal and plant remains, it is hoped the research team will be able to determine whether or not the Mississippians and Oneota were occupying the same buildings (cohabiting), were living side by side, or were on the site at different times.

~ report by Deb Stelton ~