Program in Archaeology Technology and Historical Structures

Smithsonian Magazine highlights the role of a Rochester historian and archaeologist in unearthing Bermuda’s colonial origins.

Each spring, Rochester undergraduates conduct archaeological fieldwork, unearthing and preserving Bermuda’s rich history.

Julia Granato crisscrossed Europe to study human bone collection and display sites. Now she’s pondering what it means to display and visit human remains.

For the last three summers, Rochester undergraduates have worked to analyze and preserve the ancient forts along the coast of Ghana, while exploring the historical and cultural context of the structures they study.

How do you convey a 91,000-square-foot castle with more than 160 rooms on the Ghana coast, back to Rochester, so at any time you could take a virtual tour as if you were really there? Or study the castle’s structure brick by brick?

Seniors Melissa Wen, Nathan Nickerson, and Jarrod Young are this year's winners of the Wells Award, given each year to high-achieving students in the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences who also excel in the humanities.

The most help I can do for the preservation and heritage of Elmina castle, Fort Amsterdam, and the other slave castles along of the coast of Ghana is to teach others how they can study and care for the castle tomorrow.

The goal of this entry isn’t to try and definitively answer these questions, but rather to discuss how I got my feet planted. The first step was to acknowledge that I am not here to be comfortable.

“As a student in the digital media studies department, it amazed me to see how the different tools and methods of studying the structures added to our understanding of how the forts were built and how they might have changed over time.”

"Since arriving at Elmina, my heart has been flooded with sorrowful thoughts that fly back to the colonial period, when elegant pieces of architecture such as Elmina Castle were built to house pillaged materials such as gold and ivory, as well as human beings."