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Nation, College, Wartime: Archaeology at a WWI Student Army Training Corps Camp at New Hampshire College

International Journal of Historical Archaeology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

During World War I, the U.S. War Department contracted with 157 universities to form the National Army Training Detachments whose mission was to train college-age draftees in 66 critical army trades (subsequently the Student Army Training Corps). This program is an overlooked part of First World War history and has received little to no archaeological inquiry. This paper investigates the New Hampshire College camp. Working between documentary and archaeological materials, this paper explores how the interrelated duties of educational institutions, businesses, government, and individuals merged with an American wartime imagined community here but also how in their lived experiences of the camp, people materialized the complications of balancing citizenship, difference, duty, and nation. The social lives of the lower-rank men who inhabited these camps, the composite communities formed at them, and the impact of the government’s assertion of control over institutions of higher education all carry material ramifications that deserve further investigation.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all of the students in Anthropology 444 The Lost Campus: The Archaeology of UNH who first found the Barracks in the site archives and shovel testing program. The Hamel Center for Undergraduate Research Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship for Jillian Price made the expanded work possible. A special thank you goes to Craig Brown for sharing his expertise on the dig at the Barracks. The librarians at UNH’s Milne Special Collections and Archives have been a tremendous resource and we are deeply grateful to them. We thank all of the students and volunteers who helped excavate, wash artifacts, and catalog these materials. The comments of the editor and two anonymous reviewers helped us improve the paper. All shortcomings, of course, remain our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Jillian Price

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of New Hampshire, 73 Main Street, 313 Huddleston Hall, Durham, NH, 03824, USA

    Meghan C. L. Howey

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  1. Jillian Price
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  2. Meghan C. L. Howey
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Correspondence to Meghan C. L. Howey.

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Price, J., Howey, M.C.L. Nation, College, Wartime: Archaeology at a WWI Student Army Training Corps Camp at New Hampshire College. Int J Histor Archaeol 20, 289–317 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0338-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0338-5

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