Description
Asylum Hill Bioarchaeological Field School
June 29-August 2, 2025
8 semester credits
$4,350 with room and partial board/$2,790 without (Minority scholarship available!)
Applications due February 7, 2025
The Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), in conjunction with Millsaps College, invites anthropology students to participate in the bioarchaeological field school at the cemetery of the original Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum (ca. 1855-1935). This unique opportunity is available to a limited number [20] of students in 2025.
The cemetery, which is located on the UMMC campus, contains the unmarked graves of over 4,000 individuals who will be removed to make way for vital medical center expansion. Students will spend five weeks in the heart of Jackson, Mississippi, working alongside a professional archaeological crew on the excavation as well as laboratory tasks. Training will focus on bioarchaeological methods, including burial excavation, human osteology, and mortuary artifact identification. Students will also receive instruction in basic archaeological methods, such as mapping, soil sample collection, and the creation of field sketches. Previous coursework in human osteology is not required but will be beneficial to participants. All students should have completed an introductory course in archaeology or anthropology and should come prepared to work in the extreme heat and humidity of a Mississippi summer.
The Asylum Hill Cemetery field school will provide students the rare opportunity to gain experience in human burial excavation without the expense of traveling abroad. Participants will contribute to a greater understanding of the African American and Euroamerican population that lived and died at the asylum and will gather data that allow the stories of deceased patients to be told. The Asylum Hill Project plans to permanently memorialize the interred individuals during a later phase of the work.