Bard Archaeology

“Bard College seeks to inspire curiosity, a love of learning, idealism, and a commitment to the link between higher education and civic participation. Their main campus covers nearly 1,000 acres of fields and forested land bordering the Hudson River. They are located in Annandale-on-Hudson, a hamlet in the town of Red Hook, just a 15 minute drive south of Historic Germantown.” (source)

Bard’s land acknowledgement, developed in cooperation with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, states:

In the spirit of truth and equity, it is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are gathered on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who are the original stewards of this land. Today, due to forced removal, the community resides in Northeast Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We honor and pay respect to their ancestors past and present, as well as to future generations and we recognize their continuing presence in their homelands. We understand that our acknowledgement requires those of us who are settlers to recognize our own place in and responsibilities towards addressing inequity, and that this ongoing and challenging work requires that we commit to real engagement with the Munsee and Mohican communities to build an inclusive and equitable space for all.

(Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)

Summer Field School

“Bard’s Field School is a hands-on summer learning program that enables students to do field research for college credit. Christoph Lindner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Bard’s Archaeologist in Residence, works with community colleagues to research descendants of the 1710 Palatine German migration & their later neighbors, some of whom were African American. Excavation continues at the 1746 Parsonage, or minister's residence, in Historic Germantown that housed non-church families in the 19th Century.” (source)

FOHG President, Ethan Dickerman, has been a Site Supervisor for the Field School since 2019. He’s taught numerous first-time archaeology students proper excavation techniques, stratigraphic drawing, artifact identification and analysis, and how to conduct a material density analysis (MDA). As an established organization encouraging civic engagement, we will continue working to increase funding and expand the program, making it more easily accessible to people of all ages from the local area and beyond, while partnering with schools also from the local area and beyond.