This week marks one month of working in the admissions office, and so far I’ve given 24 tours (according to the tour counter Elise and I have going)! A lot of the students on my tours haven’t decided what they want to study in college, which is an experience I can definitely relate to. I didn’t take my first anthropology class until my sophomore year, it was called ‘The Archaeology of Wellesley: College Hall Fire Field School’ (aka WCHAP). I didn’t meet the prerequisite of having taken an anthropology class prior, but it seemed so interesting that I begged the professor to let me in.
Smashing plates in class!
Before Wellesley was this large, sprawling campus, everything was contained into one building called College Hall. Students and faculty all lived here; there were classrooms and labs, and administrative offices. In 1914, College Hall burned down 😥 but thankfully no one was hurt. Over 100 years later, Professor Elizabeth Minor created this class to get students involved with her community based archaeology project focusing on College Hall.
College Hall dorm room!
Previous iterations of the class had excavated where College Hall used to be, in front of the Tower Court dorms, uncovering objects like china plates, keys, and a lot of nails. This class gave us the freedom to engage with the objects and the college community in a variety of different ways. My group helped create an Instagram page (@collegehallarchaeology) for the project, but other groups worked together to 3D print objects or create a model of College Hall in the Sims. The history of Wellesley has always intrigued me, and I loved how this class allowed us the independence to explore the aspects of this project that interested us the most.
Leftover relic from a previous iteration of the class.