Education as Liberation: Using Archaeology to Serve Modern Working Class Needs

Abstract

The working classes have been overlooked as a population that could benefit from social-justice-oriented critical public archaeology approaches. The Anthracite Heritage Program sought to address this gap by targeting educational attainment among students in the historically working class, chronically underserved northeastern Pennsylvania region. Public archaeology initiatives to promote interest and knowledge about undergraduate education revealed that the archaeologists’ greatest contribution was our own (class-based) knowledge of the intricacies of university admissions, funding, and life in the United States. In this way, the project ended up serving underserved communities in the ways that they needed help the most: securing the knowledge to attain class mobility.