The Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) is Springfield’s public, yet university-based archaeological research center. Through grants and private donors, the organization does research and collaborates on local projects and provides hands-on experience for archaeology students at MSU. CAR recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2025, and CAR Director Kevin Cupka Head said it was a busy year for them.
“There’s not too many university-based applied archaeology centers that are doing the kind of work that we’re doing, at the scale that we’re doing it,” said Cupka Head.
He talked about a recent expedition to the Amazon Rainforest that two of their research archaeologists took in October. Cupka Head said the archaeologists used satellite and drone imaging to detect potential archaeological sites and features. They found that this method allowed them to see past the tree canopy, something he said can’t be accomplished with the naked eye.
“So, they’ve allowed archaeologists to identify interesting features and anomalies on the ground surface in the Amazon where people haven’t been able to actually reach and look at,” he said. “And even if you are there on ground, it's often so dense and difficult to actually see what you’re standing on that you’re not able to detect these things with the naked eye.”
Closer to home, they're also working with the City of Springfield on the Renew Jordan Creek project.
“That’s been extremely exciting. We’re uncovering the entire history of Springfield and pre-Springfield,” he said.
Cupka Head explained that there’s an archaeological component to most construction projects. In the 60s, he said, legislation passed requiring archaeological or architectural and historical work to be done ahead of any major, federally funded ground disturbing or construction projects.
He said this legislation has also created a workforce need in the industry.
“In our case, we're fortunate that we actually do have a very steady, stable, even in the current climate, a very steady and stable industry that needs trained qualified workers out there doing the job,” Cupka Head said.
So, he said, one of CAR’s main goals has been training archaeology students with hands-on experience. He said he prepares them to do the kind of work that would be expected of them at a job, with field and lab experience. He teaches a field survey course in the fall where students do the kind of survey work that would be expected of them at a private company or state federal agency. Cupka Head added that he was doing the same thing when he was an undergraduate student, and his goal is to work with as many students as he can.
“I found that once I graduated, those skills, both the soft skills and the actual, like methods that I learned translated very well into an actual career for me,” he said.
In May, archaeology students joined CAR and Cupka Head for a three-week field school at the Darr Agricultural Center. Cupka Head said the excavation site was an antebellum plantation from the 1830’s, called the William Townsend House.
“It would’ve been a plantation with a white family from Virginia and then up to 13 or maybe more enslaved persons as well, that they had brought with them from Virginia that were living on the property,” he said.
He explained that they knew there was archaeology at the site because of other projects that had been done, but no one had been able to find anything intact yet. Then, he said, they uncovered a wall foundation.
“We knew we were kind of honing in, based on previous research and based on, you know, the work that the students were doing – digging shovel tests and finding artifacts and we’re figuring out, ‘okay there’s more over here, there’s more earlier stuff over here, keep focusing in,’ and then we did, we actually hit the wall of the house,” said Cupka Head.
He added that in the process, they also discovered what they believe was a layer of floor sweepings that would’ve fallen through the cracks of the wood panel flooring of the house.
“So, we have this layer of stuff that’s just, you know, a record of the daily life of this family,” he said.
Cupka Head said the collaboration with Darr on the project has been great, and his hope is to be able to do more public outreach and education in the future. Archaeology, he said, is crucial to understanding our past.
“Without that textual record, without documents, without, you know, an actual person you can go talk to, there’s no way to get that information other than to look at what was left behind,” he said.
