An Archaeology of Chicago Archaeology: Urban-Heritage Dissonances from DuSable to the Mecca Flats

• Rebecca S. Graff ^[1]
  1. [1] Lake Forest College

     Lake Forest College

     Township of Shields, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Historical Archaeology, ISSN 0440-9213, Vol. 58, Nº. 2, 2024, págs. 212-236
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Archaeological practice grapples with several kinds of dissonance in and of Chicago: the current municipally mandated commissions charged with responding to and reevaluating the commemorative landscape; the amateur, academic, private, and state archaeological apparatus that oversees what, if any, archaeological research is undertaken and reported; and the desires of people in Chicago for an understanding of the city that goes beyond the veneration of great architects and architecture. Archaeological work at Chicago’s Mecca Flats (built 1892) is a case study for potential ways to subvert forms of urban dissonance. The Mecca was a modern apartment prototype, a hotel for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a majority-white- then majority-Black-tenancy building, a social center of the 1920s Black Metropolis, and a symbol of urban blight demolished to expand the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 2018, archaeological research joined the more commonplace architectural veneration to uncover this material legacy of urban renewal.