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Bard 27 Future Directions

The Sands site has been almost completely destroyed. The artifacts however, have been excavated, interpreted, catalogued, and stored, always available to researchers for study of the people who inhabited the Bard College lands before us. The ceramics, glassware, and articles of domestic life will remain available for display purposes. These objects, even in fragmentary form, also serve in comparative study with artifact assemblages from many other sites.

Late-19th Century Life in Annandale

An ice skate and leather shoe.
The remarkably well-preserved plates, bowls, and bottles from the Sands site provide a look at social consumption in a prominent family from ca. 1864-1885. A few hundred feet away, the first buildings of St. Stephens were the living and academic space of the new college. The refuse of coal ash from heating and the multifarious items of domestic existence were transported and dumped down a steep cliff. These artifacts, apparently from ca. 1860-1910, are being unearthed for preservation in advance of building a wing on the library. Future plans include a comparison between the material expressions of the Sands family, close relatives of the Bards, and things of daily life that went with the new institution that they founded.

Bard College Student Dump 1860-1910 Discovered

Bard Archaeology Lab
Artifacts reflecting the social and economic lives of the men attending Bard, then St. Stephans are available for researchers to study and interpret.  Bard students in the "Historical Archaeology" course and in lab methods tutorials have an opportunity to assist in archival research and in creation of artifact exhibits about the Sands site, the Library Expansion site, and other domestic quarters such as the Gardener’s Lodge at Blithewood and the R. Tillotson site.