(No caption)
A student at the Hamtramck dig site on Joseph Campau Avenue in south Hamtramck. (Wayne State University photo)
Here's an unusual Saturday diversion that costs nothing and involves something you likely haven't done.
Visitors can stand alongside Wayne State graduate students hand-excavating parts of a historic site near railroad tracks in Hamtramck. It's the first organized archaeological exploration in that city.
The anthropology class project, open for public viewing from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 27, is at Joseph Campau Avenue and Alice Street on Hamtramck's south side. The cleared lot previously held shops, homes, a 1930s bar called the Nut House and a larger 1914 building called Old Hamtramck Center, a base for police and fire departments before the village became a city in 1922.
Students in an Archaeological Field Methods course taught by Professor Krysta Ryzewski have dug up toys, buttons, bottle fragments and a bullet casing near the old police station site.
Artifacts are taken to Wayne State's archaeology lab for inspection and then displayed at the Hamtramck Historical Museum.
A one-minute project video is below.
