A University of Saskatchewan archaeology professor is hoping a farm family will volunteer its homestead site for a field school this summer.
Margaret Kennedy wants to teach 10 students about excavation on a Depression era homestead for five weeks in May and June.
She said the site would hopefully be close to Saskatoon and would have been occupied in the 1930s and then abandoned for the past 60 years.
“It doesn’t have to have standing buildings,” she said.
“Abandoned root cellars and garbage dumps are ideal,” as long as they don’t contain modern garbage, broken equipment or chemical containers.
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Kennedy said the history of small farms and homesteads is just as important and rich a history as many other aspects of Saskatchewan’s past, and archaeology provides a different but worthwhile way to teach students about that past.
She would also prefer a site that is in pasture rather than a cultivated field. She said if farmers are concerned about their livestock falling into the excavated site, she promises to either fence off the dig or cover the holes until the group is finished and then fill it in.
“I’d also like to talk to people about their Depression memories,” said Kennedy, who has been teaching at the U of S since 1993.
To contact Kennedy, call 306-966-4182, e-mail marg.
kennedy@usask.ca or write to her at the Department of Archaeology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, S7M 4B1.
