The Secret Life of a Tin City Bead

7:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Online

On October of 2017, while excavating near Moore Residence Hall, two archaeology majors at the University of Evansville uncovered a glass bead that was less than one centimeter long.  The site at which they were working is the only on-campus, on-going archaeological excavation in the United States.  For several years students from the Department of archaeology and art history have been uncovering evidence for College Courts Apartments, student housing built in 1946 for veterans attending Evansville College on the GI Bill and their families.  The military-surplus buildings were not as stately as their name implies leading contemporary students to dub the aluminum-clad residences “Tin City.”  The university administration tore down the buildings in 1962 to make way for the construction of Moore Residence Hall and Wheeler Auditorium, burying a surprising amount of evidence about evolving attitudes towards gender, class, and childhood in post-war Evansville and America. 

Amid the thousands of artifacts students have uncovered, however, that one tiny glass bead stands out.  Learn about the circuitous, decades-long journey it took from where it was created in Czechoslovakia to where it was lost, and ultimately found again, by two sharp-eyed UE students.

Alan Kaiser, PhD
Professor of Archaeology, University of Evansville

Alan Kaiser, who earned a Doctor of Philosophy in archaeology from Boston University, specializes in Roman archaeology and the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to site analysis. He has conducted fieldwork at a number of sites in Spain, Italy, Greece, England, and on the Caribbean island of Nevis as well as in the US in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Indiana. Kaiser is the author of three books, The Urban Dialogue: An Analysis of the Use of Space in the Roman City of Empuries, Spain (Archaeopress, 2000), Roman Urban Street Networks (Routledge, 2011), and Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal: The Long-Suppressed Story of One Woman’s Discoveries and the Man Who Stole Credit for Them (Rowman and Littlefield).

Professor Kaiser teaches courses in Roman and Etruscan archaeology, as well as courses in Roman history and the Latin language. He has also conducted training excavations in connection with the archaeological field techniques course. The most recent excavation was on the Evansville campus, at the site of the post-WWII "Tin City."