{"id":101928,"date":"2025-05-29T15:00:24","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T19:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=101928"},"modified":"2025-05-30T09:43:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T13:43:15","slug":"research-retrospective-digging-into-the-human-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/05\/research-retrospective-digging-into-the-human-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Retrospective: Digging into the human experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of a monthly series celebrating research breakthroughs and successes at Brock University over the past\u00a0<\/em>60 years<\/em><\/a>. To read other stories in the series, visit\u00a0<\/em>The Brock News<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

David Rupp\u2019s interest was hooked when a passerby found what looked like the remains of 19th-century red earthenware pottery near Niagara\u2019s Bruce Trail.<\/p>\n

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Then-Ontario Minister of Culture and Recreation Robert Welch toured the Jordan Pottery Study Project site in 1977 with Hamilton\u2019s CHCH TV airing a news feature on the visit. Then-Professor of Classics David Rupp (far right) pointed out one of the dig\u2019s features to Welch (second from the left) and other members of the delegation.<\/p><\/div>\n

Curious about what lay beneath the discovery, the then-Professor of Classics at Brock organized a dig in 1976 with students from his Classical Archaeology course and wrote proposals to create the Jordan Pottery Study Project.<\/p>\n

Sponsored by what was known as the Brock University Museum of Cypriote Antiquities, the Jordan Historical Museum of the Twenty and the Niagara Peninsula Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the project soon took off.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur discoveries documented a previously unknown but important, local red earthenware pottery kiln and workshop that operated between 1831 and 1841,\u201d says Rupp, who is now retired. \u201cMany of the vessels were restored and given to the Jordan Museum of the Twenty for their collections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four decades later, more of Niagara\u2019s history was unearthed with maritime archaeologist and Adjunct Professor of History Kimberly Monk\u2019s exploration of a plot under the present-day Burgoyne Bridge in St. Catharines.<\/p>\n

With help from community volunteers<\/a>, her research team excavated and studied the site of the former Shickluna Shipyard<\/a>. <\/strong>Constructed on the shores of Twelve Mile Creek by Maltese immigrant Lewis Shickluna, the shipyard was used to build and repair ships from 1834 to 1894.<\/p>\n

Monk and Rupp are among the many Brock University humanities researchers have made close to home and around the world.<\/p>\n

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Then-Professor of Classics David Rupp (far left) shows Welch (second from the left) a piece of pottery found at the Jordan Pottery Study Project site while other delegation members look on.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cBrock was founded with a conviction that inquiry into human stories, cultures and actions is of prime importance,\u201d says Carol Merriam, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Professor of Classics.<\/p>\n

She notes Brock\u2019s first president and most of the University\u2019s initial group of professors came from humanities disciplines.<\/p>\n

Merriam says research in subjects such as history, classics, philosophy, literatures, languages and arts \u201chelps form our responses to human events and interactions, and our understanding of the forces that unite us and divide us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Humanities research achievements over the years include:<\/p>\n