WSU will add three anthropologists to its faculty, which sources say is part of a larger shift in the department to urban history with a Detroit bent.
The South End reports that the success of Wayne State's Worker's Row House, an excavation of an 1850s tenement on Corktown's Sixth Street, has inspired the department to add a community learning initiative and more classes on Detroit history.
Excerpt:
According to Thomas Killion, a
WSU professor and the archaeologist directing the Corktown work, the department has been working in the neighborhood since 2006. Since then, approximately 5,000 artifacts have been excavated from
the site, some of which are on display at the Gordon L. Grosscup Museum
of Anthropology inside Old Main. Killion described the Worker's Row House as a "treasure trove,"
noting that the "area behind the house has perfect (archaeological)
layers."
Another future goal of the department might be to work with developers to excavate old buildings and sites before they're restored. Read more about the WSU Anthropology department
here.
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