Writing Archaeology : Philadelphia stories

A presentation by Rebecca Yamin

Mon, March 18, 2024 6:00 p.m.

Archaeological investigations under the streets of Philadelphia often attract onlookers and even the press, but very few people get to learn what it all means after the artifacts are analyzed.  Rebecca Yamin’s book, Digging in the City of Brotherly Love, uses the artifacts to bring to life people in Philadelphia’s past—a shipyard owner who was here before William Penn, a Quaker lady who ran an illegal tavern during Revolutionary War times, an African-American barber who was also a lay preacher in the AME church, a patent medicine manufacturer who built a proto skyscraper before there were skyscrapers anywhere, an early twentieth-century button factory owner—to name just a few. Yamin will talk about how stories are constructed from archaeological remains and how urban archaeology contributes to the historical record.

Rebecca Yamin is a retired historical archaeologist who specialized in urban and landscape archaeology. As a longtime employee of John Milner Associates (now Commonwealth Heritage Group) she directed excavations on the sites of the Independence Visitor Center on the middle block of Independence Mall, the Liberty Bell Center, the Convention Center extension, the Museum of the American Revolution, and many other projects in Philadelphia as well as in New York. She is the author of Digging in the City of Brotherly Love, Stories from Philadelphia Archaeology, first published in 2008 and now in a second edition, Archaeology at the Site of the Museum of the American Revolution, and the co-author of The Archaeology of Prostitution and Clandestine Pursuits.  She has a BA degree in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and MA and Ph.D. degrees from New York University.

Can’t attend in person? Register on Zoom: https://bit.ly/YaminFLP

 Free and open to Everyone

Location: Parkway Central Free Library, 1901 Vine Street
Enter the Heim Center classroom at the back of the library on Wood Street.
There is metered parking around the library building and a paid parking lot behind the library with an entrance off Callowhill Street.