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Allison McGovern on the Origins of Freetown

Fri, 03/31/2023 - 15:05

Allison McGovern, an anthropological archaeologist and a lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University, will discuss her research on the origins of East Hampton's Freetown neighborhood “and its evolution into the late-20th century” on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Calvary Baptist Church.

Like her other work, Dr. McGovern’s ongoing Mapping Memories of Freetown Project “highlights the experiences of historically marginalized and underrepresented groups through archaeology, oral history, and ethnographic mapping.”

In 2020 she was a recipient of an inaugural Robert D.L. Gardiner Writing the History of Greater New York fellowship at the Gotham Center for New York City History to work on her book “Long Island Dirt: Recovering Our Buried Past Through Historical Archaeologies.” According to the center, the book “explores how Long Island residents crafted their own identity and culture, including the ‘forgotten and silenced ’ past of Native American villages, slave and free black communities, working-class neighborhoods, and planned communities that existed alongside the well-known estates, farms, and suburbs.”

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