KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 6, 2023 – On Thursday, Oct. 12, three University of Rhode Island professors will explore some of the 5,000-year history of the Kingston Campus area in a talk titled “History and Archaeology of the URI Campus Landscape.”
URI President Marc Parlange will open the talk and provide greetings. The event will begin at 7 p.m. and will be held in South Kingstown High School’s auditorium, 215 Columbia St.
In 2017, URI celebrated its 125th anniversary. The land on which the university sits, however, has a much longer and more complicated history, some of which is visible and invisible to community members. Ancestors of the Narragansett, the only federally recognized tribe in this area, lived and worked in the area for millennia prior to the arrival of Europeans. In the 18th century, the land was a plantation owned by the Niles family, which controlled enslaved Africans and Indigenous people.
Kristine Bovy, Catherine DeCesare, and Roderick Mather will highlight the land grant, and the founding and early institutional history of the college. They will also examine archaeological work done on campus, consider Indigenous knowledge of the area, and call attention to the cultural landscape.
Kris Bovy is an anthropologist specializing in zooarchaeology. She has conducted archaeological analysis and fieldwork in a wide variety of settings throughout North America. Her research focuses on the history of human and animal interactions in coastal settings, attempting to better understand past human behavior and generate data to address contemporary environmental and biological conservation issues. Bovy is the chair of sociology and anthropology at URI and has been a faculty member at the University for 18 years.
Cathy DeCesare, an assistant professor in the department of history, teaches Rhode Island history and legal, colonial and U.S. women’s history at URI, and collaborates with colleagues and students on research projects showcasing and raising awareness about the relevance of history. She is co-director of the URI Applied History Lab. DeCesare has been teaching at URI since 2008 and previously was an archivist at Brown University and the Rhode Island Supreme Court Judicial Records Center.
Rod Mather is professor of maritime history and underwater archaeology at URI. He directs the University’s graduate program in history, anthropology and archaeology, and is co-director of the Applied History Lab. Mather’s research interests include historical and archaeological maritime landscapes, underwater geophysical survey and mapping, GIS applications for underwater archaeology, the evolution of shipbuilding technology, and historical change in the Atlantic World. He has collaborated on projects funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Parks Service.
The Speaker Series is sponsored by the South Kingstown 300th Anniversary Committee.
The University of Rhode Island, whose Kingston Campus is located within South Kingstown, is proud to support and collaborate with South Kingstown and the 300th Anniversary Steering Committee in celebrating this year’s historic milestone for the town and community. For more information, contact Joanne Esposito at joanneesposito87@gmail.com or John Desmond at desmond@sunydutchess.edu.