Walking through Time: the 5,000-Year History of the URI Campus
Document Type
Presentation
Date of Original Version
10-16-2021
Abstract
In 2017, the University of Rhode Island marked its 125th anniversary. The land on which the university sits, however, has a much longer and more complicated history, which is invisible to most members of the campus community. Ancestors of the Narragansett, the only federally recognized tribe in this area, lived and worked here for millennia prior to the arrival of Europeans. Archaeological work performed prior to the construction of the Ryan Center in the 1990s also revealed a late 18th century burial ground associated with the Niles family, which likely contains the remains of enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, part of the tumultuous history of Rhode Island.
Read Marybeth Reilly-McGreen’s article, “A Walk Through Time” from University of Rhode Island Magazine‘s Fall 2022 issue.