The St. James AME Zion Church Community Excavations
Our fourth and FINAL SEASON of community excavations at St. James AME Zion Church in Ithaca NY has concluded. We wrapped up fieldwork on November 16, 2024. Artifact processing, cataloguing, and analysis is still ongoing.
Beginning in 2021, CIAMS faculty in collaboration with Gerard Aching (Cornell Africana) and Reverend Terrance King (St. James AME Zion Church) launched a new community engaged initiative to explore the history of the St. James community. The St. James AME Zion church building was constructed during the late 1830s and is today the oldest AME Zion church in the world still in active use. The building is known to have been the most important Underground Railroad station in Ithaca during the 1840s and 1850s. Harriett Tubman is known to have spent time at the Church and Frederick Douglass also visited.
We conducted excavations over the course of four fall field seasons, from 2021-2024. In each season, our excavation team included community members and Cornell students and faculty. Our goal has been to use archaeology as a means to help the Church and wider community tell empowering stories of St. James's past. We hope to inspire all participants to learn more about their community and its rich history.
Cornell student Ruth Rajcoomar '24 discusses the need for a more inclusive and equitable field and how the community excavations at St. James highlight the potential for financially inclusive fieldwork experiences.
SMSA students participating in excavations at St. James AME Zion Church in Fall 2021.
(Photo courtesy of the Science and Mathematics Academy Saturday STEM Program.)
As part of Saturday’s festival on June 15th, Cornell’s Institute for Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) and St. James AME Zion Church organized an artifact washing activity for kids next to the church.
A multidisciplinary team of Cornell students and faculty and local schoolchildren began an archeological dig Sept. 18 at St. James AME Zion church in Ithaca.
Church members and a multidisciplinary team of Cornell faculty and students are learning more about St. James A.M.E. Zion Church by doing an archaeological dig.
During the fall of 2021, sixteen Cornell graduate and undergraduate students took part in the St James AME Zion Community Excavations alongside Cornell faculty and middle and high school community members. The student participants included CIAMS graduate student members and Archaeology undergraduate...
