University of Evansville archaeology students Sarah Wilkins and partner Nick Ports are using small tools — a hand pick and trowel — in the hard beige dirt.
They’re clearing a mere three centimeters deep at a time, using careful, intentional movements.
“So we kind of just go down in layers, to see any changes in the soil and collect any artifacts as we go along,” Wilkins said. “A lot of times archaeology, we don't necessarily find big and grander things, a lot of times that some of the most important information is very small and hard to notice if you go too quickly.”
This pair, and the rest of the class are searching in one meter by two-meter rectangles in the shade of the massive tree on the campus grounds.
UE is celebrating 20 years of the “Tin City” excavation project.
This is an archaeological dig of the first on-campus student housing, which was dismantled in the 1960s. Little information was preserved on the housing and who lived there — but much is being learned through their recovered artifacts.
Archaeology professor Alan Kaiser said only one percent of the possible area of Tin City has been excavated so far.
He said Tin City was housing made for veterans returning from World War II who were on the G.I. Bill.
“And then it was later extended to Korean War vets,” he said. “It was specifically housing intended for them, to attract them to campus. They lived in these units that had corrugated steel siding and roofs … everybody nicknamed it ‘Tin City’ because they look like tin cans, which is where the name comes from.”
They were built in 1946, and dismantled in 1962. Tin City was a group of one-story repurposed military barracks. After demolition, when Wheeler Auditorium was built, it covered one and a half of the buildings. Landscaping covering the rest.
“And so what wasn't taken away during the demolition is still there,” Kaiser said. “And that's what we are finding.”
Kaiser opened a shop drawer, foam-line and dotted with small labeled items.
He said one of the most interesting artifacts they find are fragments of the flooring — concrete painted grey on the flat side. “ And so when we find chunks of this, we know all the other artifacts in association with these chunks have to be associated with the people who lived at tin city," Kaiser said. "So it's a time marker.”
He said these artifacts paint a picture of the living conditions in Tin City. With no evidence of central heating, there might have only been propane heat in one room per building. Because of their construction, they were probably hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
Still, Kaiser thinks these student-veterans started families here — evidenced by items like an infant-size barrette and a piece of a bike pedal.
These are just a few of the nearly 4,500 excavated from the site.
Students Olivia Barclay and Andrew Norton are excavating their tract, using the small pick and trowel. Norton said he enjoys learning about how these local people lived.
“Most of our classes in archaeology here are about the classics,” he said. “You're talking the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians; we aren't learning much about American history, especially something as recent as post World War II. So it's more relevant in a sense to us and I really enjoy that about it.”
Professor Kaiser said while little is known about many of the individual residents of Tin City, they did make history themselves overall.
“This generation, these veterans who came back, they changed everything about the United States. They changed our economy. They changed our politics, our society, and they changed higher education. And they demanded things that they wouldn't have wanted for their children that they did not have or they forced the universities to have.”
These included career and psychological counseling — something new to campuses at the time. They also wanted better student housing for their children.
The new housing UE felt compelled to build? Moore Hall — which is behind the Tin City Excavation site. They also built Hugh Hall which has been dismantled to make way for new housing.
“So it seems so simple and basic to us,” Kaiser said. “We just take it for granted (that) a college will have dormitories, but no it was not a given. It's a change that they forced on the universities.”
The excavations will continue for the foreseeable future on Wednesday afternoons at UE.
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