Research Projects

The Utah Pottery Project focuses on studying immigrant potters who lived throughout the Mormon Domain of Utah in the 19th century. The project’s goals include cataloging the immigrant pottery makers and clay industry workers; locating and identifying archaeological pottery sites; cataloging known examples of Utah pottery housed in museum collections; and assembling and disseminating information about the potters, their families, their work, their products, and their contributions to the history of Utah.

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Funded by the British Academy, the Early European Guns (EEG) project is a first-stage investigation into the technology, ballistic capabilities, and forensic signatures of early firepower. Through the systematic documentation, measurement, and recording of small-bore gunpowder artillery and handguns preserved in collections across Europe, EEG sheds new light on the early development of gunpowder weaponry in Europe from c.1450–1520. The project is a collaboration between researchers at Michigan Tech and the University of Huddersfield in Yorkshire, England. The first version of the guns database is available on the project website.

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The Industrial Archaeology Image Archive website was initiated to make the Robert M. Vogel slide collection more accessible for research purposes or for the simple pleasure of viewing. The archive’s primary collection consists of Vogel’s slides, which represent over 30 years of travel to sites of significant industrial heritage around the world. This web-based effort continues under the guidance of the industrial archaeology program.

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The Caribbean Industrial Heritage Research Program (CIHP) is a multidisciplinary research program focused on the study of the evolution of industry in the circum-Caribbean region. The CIHP is dedicated to the study of social, economic, and technological change associated with industry in the region, as well as to the promotion of industrial heritage and archaeology, including preservation, in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America.

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This course project aimed to understand how First Fridays and the art scene in Calumet contribute to community development. The project inventoried community assets and assessed how First Fridays contribute to these assets using participation observation, interviews, and surveys of First Fridays participants. An Executive Summary of this research can be found here. A full report including research procedures and results is also available here.