Excavation and Pedagogy at the Historic Bonita Camp Site on the UCI Campus - Dr. Ian Straughn

Archaeology in Interim Spaces: Excavation and Pedagogy at the Historic Bonita Camp Site on the UCI Campus

Dr. Ian Straughn

Prior to William Pereira’s grand architectural interventions in higher education, the land that would become the UCI campus housed an outpost of the Irvine Ranch operations. Today, what remains of the Bonita Camp site, are three unoccupied and rapidly deteriorating early 20th century farm houses. Colloquially known as “The Farm,” its incorporation as part of the campus has witnessed uses ranging from an ethnographic laboratory, an experimental K-8 school, and now an archaeological classroom. Using data gathered from three sessions of excavation as part of the “I DIG UCI” field methods course, this talk will explore how such interim spaces operate as particular nodes of learning and doing within the framework of totalizing forms of land development embodied in the Irvine master plan and UCI’s role as catalyst. The research presented explores whether any future preservation of the site necessarily involves the destruction of its interim character and the opportunities which that affords in creating a diversity of loosely regulated spaces on a public university campus. Put differently, we can ask the question: What possibility is there for such an intensely planned and regularized campus like UCI to maintain such a site indefinitely as an interim space? At what point do ruins simply need to be dealt with?

Dr. Straughn is Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Anthropology at UCI where he specializes in the archaeology of the Middle East post-late antiquity and developing pedagogical innovations in training students with interests in the archaeological record. His research has included excavation and survey in Syria, Jordan, Armenia, and elsewhere focused on the Islamic periods at sites such as Petra. Other projects have included work with Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu in connection with the British Libraries Endangered Archives Programme, as well as the politics and practice of heritage across the Muslim World.

Since joining UCI in 2017, after more than a decade as a faculty member with Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, his work has explored new approaches to engaging and training undergraduates in archaeology through object and project-based learning. Examples include the Egyptomania Postcard Project, the Tomb of the Social Sciences, “I Dig UCI”, as well as collaborations with the archaeology team at OC Parks. He received his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Presented to the Pacific Coast Archaeological Society (PCAS) on October 12, 2023.

For additional information on the Pacific Coast Archaeological Society, see the PCAS website at www.pcas.org