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Master of Science
Social Sciences Dept.

Graduate Research

MS students are required to gain field experience, usually as part of an annual field school. Students master excavation techniques as well as scientific tools, such as ground penetrating radar, dating technologies, and global positioning (GPS) and geographic information (GIS) technologies. These formal archeological skills combined with historical studies distinguish Michigan Tech’s program and other archeology education programs.

MS students also complete a thesis or project report, often on research questions growing out of the field school. (Past projects are described elsewhere on the graduate program web page.) Many activities have been located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, including a blacksmith’s shop and lighthouse at Ft. Wilkins in Copper Harbor; iron furnaces, bloomary forges, and kilns at Munising and Negaunee; and copper mining activities near Victoria. Other projects, such as that undertaken at Fayette, MI, focused on work and workers, as students excavated a boarding house and accompanying two-story privy at a 19 th century iron working community. Other externally-funded projects have taken our students and faculty to sugar plantations in the West Indies, lumber camps in Wisconsin, iron making sites in Kentucky, national parks in Alaska and California.

Doctoral students will be encouraged to pursue projects of greater scope. Two especially important research efforts are unfolding that indicate possible lines of inquiry and approach.

  • 1. A multi-year investigation of the site of the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY, was started in 2001. The foundry became one of America's most important antebellum manufacturing centers, producing steam engines and locomotives as well as cannon. By the end of the 19 th century, the buildings were being turned to other purposes. By the 1950s a battery making plant occupied part of the site, eventually necessitating a Superfund clean-up. In 2000, the Scenic Hudson Land Trust, current owners of the site, approached the Department to investigate and interpret the history of this former industrial complex. For the past several years, we have conducted our annual field school on the 90-acre site. The sheer size of the complex poses challenges, as does the re-use and destruction of most facilities. Today, building foundations and rubble cover much of the re-forested site. Deciphering the West Point foundry site's history may require another 5-7 years of field work. Several MS theses have been completed, and others are underway. But we envision doctoral dissertations emerging on the history of the foundry and its industrial archeology, as well studies of workers' life and housing in Cold Spring. Another opportunity is related to examine the environmental history of the West Point Foundry, a project that will enlist the assistance of the Department's environmental policy faculty. This attention to the industry and the environment opens an important avenue that Department faculty believe will be of increasing importance for IA and industrial heritage. We are eager to move work in this direction.
  • 2. In August 2004, Professor Patrick Martin and Michigan Tech students led an international team to document coal mining activities on the Svalbard archipelago north of Norway. Participants came from Norway's National Technical University in Trondheim; Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology (Marie Nisser); England (Miles Ogelthorpe, Ian West); and the Netherlands (L. Hacquebord). Located about 600 miles from the North Pole, Svalbard served as the launching point for Norwegian dirigibles that in the 1920s attempted to reach the North Pole. But the coal mines, which were opened at the turn of the 20 th century by Michigan native John M. Longyear, constitute an important industrial heritage resource. The early mine managers were graduates of the Michigan School of Mines, forerunner to Michigan Tech, and Longyear's letters, photographs, and company records are deposited at the University's archives. Documenting the archipelago's many physical remains of industry highlights the intimate relationship between the history of technology and material culture. Significantly, the material culture of every scientific or industrial endeavor on Svalbard from before 1946 is specifically protected by historic preservation laws. Michigan Tech's involvement on Svalbard was made possible by an SGER from the STS and Polar Programs at NSF. We intend this to be first of many international cooperative research projects.