This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
06/27/2023 12:01 PMThose with an interest in history and archaeology will have a unique opportunity to experience these disciplines first-hand as the Henry Whitfield State Museum is sponsoring a free public viewing of the current excavation at the property. Every Wednesday through Friday in July, weather permitting, patrons can watch as students and faculty from Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) continue their archaeological project to discover Guilford’s history.
Museum Curator Michelle Parrish said the project is critical to the museum’s mission and may also help transform Connecticut’s understanding of its earliest European inhabitants.
“We have been working with Southern since 2018,” said Parrish. “We missed 2020 due to the pandemic, but this will be their fifth field season here at the museum. They are adding so much more to what our narrative can be here at the museum,” said Parrish.
According to Parrish, the viewings are a unique opportunity for patrons to gain an understanding of the effort required to discover history.
“The project goes hand in hand with both Southern’s goals and our goals. Part of that experience is interpreting for our visitors. Our goal is education, so having our visitors to see what’s going on and interact with the archaeologists is important,” Parrish said.
There will be an exhibit curated at the museum of the objects and history uncovered so far this July as well, according to Parrish.
“The hope is to try and open that exhibit by July 15. Actually, one of the goals of the exhibit is to show how much archaeology can improve interpretation at different historic sites. Once we have a better handle on what they have found, the new will be incorporating that into the exhibit,” said Parrish. “It is definitely informing our interpretation of the site.”
According to William Farley, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at SCSU and lead on the dig, the SCSU field school began in 2018 and is now undertaking its fourth field season at the site.
“This summer will mark our fifth year. However, there has been archaeology on and off at the museum going back to the 1960s. Most notably, Connecticut College did digs in the 1990s under archaeologist Harold Juli, and Yale did a field school there from 2000 to 2007,” said Farley.
Farley says the excavation hopes to serve several educational and cultural purposes.
“My initial intent was practical and pedagogical. We needed a field site to train students in the methods of archaeology and prepare them for careers in the field. That’s still hugely important, but the project has grown a great deal. My main research and public outreach goals at the site are focused on expanding our understanding of the entirety of the history of the landscape and the people who have lived there. The historic record, and the house itself, have always told us an outsized story of Whitfield, his family, and the original Guilford Colony settlers,” said Farley. “We get vanishingly few artifacts from that era, probably a few dozen in the decades of archaeology done on-site. Instead, the archaeology tells us a lot more about both the long Indigenous occupation of the site, including of the Quinnipiac, and about later periods like the 18th and 19th centuries when the house was more often occupied by poorer, working-class tenant farmers.”
Farley said he and his students have made several important discoveries during the process and are excited about what else could be uncovered by further work.
“We have a number of incredible artifacts that will soon be on display at the museum, including a brass fragment of a chafing dish dating from the late 16th century and almost certainly belonging to the Whitfield family, Hartford-made stonewares and patriotic revolutionary-era smoking pipes suggesting a shift away from English-made goods in the late 18th century,” said Fraley. “Probably most important though are artifacts and features that speak to an Indigenous occupation of the property dating back at least 4,000 to 6,000 years, with a possible intensive occupation in the few hundred years before the arrival of the Guilford colonists.”
According to Farley, sites of this type are extremely rare in Connecticut, and the opportunity to not only discover history but to instruct his students and inform communities of their heritage is a critical aspect of this project.
“As a state museum, the Whitfield House is an important public space, and as such, it is vitally important that it invites in the public in as many ways as possible. That includes not only engaging the public as educators and scientists but also bringing the public in as consultants in the meaning of the history of their own homes,” Farley said. “That certainly means members of the non-native community in and around Guilford, but we are also working to bring the voices of marginalized groups and members of Connecticut’s Indigenous community to have a say in the telling of their own history in this place.”
The excavation project is open to the public on Wednesdays through Fridays in July from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Henry Whitfield Museum, 248 Old Whitefield Street, Guilford. Viewings are free and open to the public. For more information, call 203-453-2457 or visit portal.ct.gov/edc-henrywhitfieldstatemuseum.