Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014

On Wednesday, December 3rd, we had Samantha Maletta join us for our meeting. Samantha is a graduate student at Wayne State University and she presented on some of the archaeological work she and her fellow students have been working on in Detroit. Her presentation was called Unearthing Detroit, Wayne State Urban Archaeology. She spoke about two sites that she has been working on, the Roosevelt Park and the site of the Renaissance Center.

The Roosevelt Park site was originally established as housing for Irish immigrants in the 1840's who called it Cork Town. They were the working class or the lower middle class people. Following the arrival of the Irish were people of African descent.

In 1911 hundreds of homes were demolished for the building of the famous Detroit train station that was built in 1913 and the Roosevelt Park built in 1919 just in front of the train station. An interesting little tidbit was that the top two floors of the train station were never actually finished!

In 2011, 2012 and 2014 excavation were under taken at the park where they uncovered many household items. These items are being cleaned, cataloged and researched by the students at Wayne State University. Also in their care are the 30,000 artifacts rescued at the Renaissance Center site prior to its construction in the early 1970s. They were excavating as fast as the archaeologists could, just ahead of the construction machinery. Here too the y uncovered many household goods including ceramics, leather, thread still on a button and even newspaper that was still readable.

To see what the students have been up to, you can follow them on The Unearthing Detroit Project Facebook page or on their Twitter page. They even have a website which can be found at: unearthingdetroit.worldpress.com

Thank you Samantha for coming to our meeting and enlightening us about the important work you and your fellow Wayne State University students are doing to preserve a part of Detroit's heritage.