HANDS On with RUth Marris-Macaulay

A look at Lincoln’s signature approach to active learning

On a sunny day last October, 18 students traveled to the Murray Family Athletic Complex at Faxon Farm in Rehoboth and started digging in the dirt. This was no random treasure hunt, however. The juniors and seniors were applying the excavation skills they’d acquired in Ruth Marris-Macaulay’s history elective, Art & Archaeology of the Ancient World. Latin teacher Hazzard Bagg, who has excavation experience from his days at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, joined them.

Before a single shovel went in the dirt, though, Marris-Macaulay and her students researched the history of the place, a 1779 farmhouse built near the site of an even older dwelling. Town records revealed that the houses had been lived in by some of Rehoboth’s founding families. They also learned that in the 1700s, people mostly threw their trash out the back door. MarrisMacaulay sited two test pits accordingly, and the students unearthed nails, bones, even horse teeth.

“We found a tiny piece of English transferware,” Marris-Macaulay said. “We researched it and were able to find the exact pattern and plate size, and the company that made it.”

Over a picnic lunch that day, students shared what they most enjoyed about the course.

“Digging is exciting,” one girl said. “I felt at one with the world—part of now and the future and the past.” Others appreciated the collaborative aspect of the work; several said they liked using both their hands and their brain.

Their final projects were as varied and engaging as they were rigorously researched and produced, ranging from papers to podcasts, posters to museum exhibits.

In The Golden City, a podcast about the 2020 discovery of a 3400-year-old city at Luxor, Egypt, Andy McEnroe ’23 enthused, “While normal people would rather think about anything else than the dregs of everyday life, there is this rare strain of people called ‘archaeologists’ who study the routine for a living. And they are determined to make you just as interested in it. I am their propaganda tool!”

A self-described “dirt archeologist,” MarrisMacaulay trained in England with Sir Barry Cunliffe, one of Britain’s preeminent archeologists. She spent much of the late ’60s and early ’70s on digs, and even graced the cover of the first issue of Current Archeology

History department head for 31 years, MarrisMacaulay will retire at the end of this semester after teaching history for 34 years and the archeology elective for the past five. She’ll be plenty busy, though, as she transcribes the handwritten diaries of a 19th-century resident of Warren, RI, who sailed to Crimea at 15 before joining the California Gold Rush.

“A lot can be learned about the past from material culture,” she said. “Learning how to read and interpret things you can touch and feel is a different skill from researching and writing.”