The Pennsylvania Gazette features Megan Kassabaum ’05, Beloit College alumna in a recent article.

Heritage West is a community archaeology project co-founded by Megan Kassabaum ’05, a Beloit College alumna who double majored in anthropology and philosophy. Kassabaum begin Heritage West in 2019 to highlight local archaeological resources in Philadelphia and to investigate research questions of interest to people in their own neighborhood.

The decision to center the project in Black Bottom, a once-thriving Black community destroyed in the 1960s under the concept of “urban renewal,” was based on conversations with community organizations.

“The project felt important to help work towards a healthier relationship between the local community and the Museum and the University, while also providing a much more diverse group of people with knowledge and skills in archaeology,” she says.

Kassabaum took her current position as a professor in the Department of Anthropology and curator in the American Section of the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, after finishing her Ph.D. focused on pre-contact Native American archaeology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 

The area now called University City is home to two of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s most beautiful college campuses: the University of Pennsylvania (aka Penn) and Drexel University. While the Black Bottom neighborhood that preceded University City met a tragic end shared by many Black neighborhoods too often viewed as ‘slums’, its artifacts trace its vibrant life through still told oral histories and beyond. During the Fall 2023 semester, students, faculty, and community members uncovered history and shared memories through the excavation of a surface parking lot in the former Black Bottom.

Kassabaum describes the level of participation as “incredible” – 22 community members, 16 students, and a small project staff. The ongoing lab work continues because of 30 community and student lab workers who wash, sort, and analyze the 19,236 objects discovered. Next steps will be determined by an eleven-member Community Advisory Board which hopes to create exhibitions, digital archives, and excavations seasons so that the artifacts are preserved and as accessible as possible to the public.

Heritage West is Kassabaum’s second major archaeological research project. Her first in in the Lower Mississippi Valley remains ongoing alongside the Philadelphia project.

“When people think of archaeology they tend to think of faraway places and the distant past, but I have always felt it was important to emphasize how much history is in our own backyards,” she says.

Kassabaum credits the Beloit College anthropology department for teaching her how to be a better archaeologist, scholar, and museum professional, especially Shannon Fie, professor and co-chair of anthropology. “She brought me into her research program right away. By involving me in the earliest stages of setting up a field project, she set me up for the career I have today. Both she and Bill Green remain mentors to me throughout my post-Beloit years.” 

The Heritage West project mirrors the type of community-based opportunities Beloit College students pursue as they learn to embrace connections among human history, culture, and biology in order to tackle social problems, empower communities, and confront challenges to our environment. It is the type of local project Kassabaum first valued studying the Native American mounds on Beloit’s campus.