Archaeologist to give insights on UALR’s Garden Site

Dr. Maureece Levin of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock will present “Place-Based Community Learning at UA Little Rock: The Garden Site Project” at the November meeting of the Ouachita Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society.

This talk will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m. in the Rainey Room in the new CIC Building at Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, 200 Whittington Ave., Hot Springs. The event is free and open to the public.

The Garden Site (3PU1132) is a historical site located on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, just south of the Campus Garden. Since Fall 2023, students, staff, faculty, and community volunteers have been working there, revealing both industrial and residential aspects of 20th Century life.

In this presentation, Professor Levin will explore archaeological and historical aspects of this ongoing work and present preliminary results. Additionally, she will discuss the development and logistics of this community archaeology project, presenting how volunteers have been incorporated as key project participants and how public outreach efforts have aided this work.

Levin is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is an archaeologist and archaeobotanist with interests in food production systems, historical ecology, niche construction, sociocultural change, and archaeological pedagogy. Her research methods focus on archaeobotany, but include a wide variety of archaeological materials, as well as ethnoarchaeology. Levin has researched ancient food cultivation strategies in Micronesia for over a decade, but her current work extends to several regions, including an ongoing project in Arkansas. She completed a Ph.D. and M.A. in anthropology at the University of Oregon, and a B.A. in anthropology at Whitman College.

The Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station at Henderson State University holds regular Archaeology Lab Days. Students and members of the public are invited to come by the research station in Proctor Hall on Thursdays between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to learn more about archaeology in Arkansas.

For more information, contact Clay Newton at 870-230-5463.