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Undergraduates in a Harvard anthropology course have begun excavating Harvard Yard for the twentieth year of the Harvard Yard Archaeology Project.

The project — a collaboration between the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Harvard University Native American Program, and the Anthropology Department — aims to investigate the lived experience of Harvard students during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Students participate in the dig during the fall semester as a part of a yearlong course, ANTHRO1130: “Archaeology of Harvard Yard.” The course has been offered every other year since 2005.

Students will then spend the spring semester analyzing their findings. Their work will be submitted to the Peabody Museum’s Digging Veritas collection — an exhibit of artifacts showcasing social and religious tensions and student life in Harvard’s history.

This year, the class’s excavation has brought students to the site of a former College building that sat between Harvard Hall and Holden Chapel, and tasked them with searching for evidence of student life.

The original building stood from 1674 until 1764, when it collapsed in a fire. Diana Loren, a Peabody Museum curator who teaches the course, said the students’ excavation efforts have revealed the building’s unique architecture — including a clay roof and a turret.

“The rest of the buildings that you’re looking at — in the Mass Bay Colony and in the Harvard-Cambridge community at the time — are just small wooden structures. So that emphasis on making a statement on the landscape that ‘We are Harvard’ is as soon as Harvard is established,” Loren said.

The building originally housed a library, kitchen, and great hall, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

So far, students have found pieces of a wine bottle and animal remains from the old dining hall, according to David M. Broussard ’26, a student taking the course.

But the project only began to focus on the building two years ago. The project’s excavations until last year focused on the site of the Indian College — which stood at Harvard from 1655 to 1689, and educated Native American and English students in missionary sciences.

Loren said that archaeology — or “excavating people’s trash” — has shed light on the daily lives of the students at the school.

Since the course’s inception, students have contributed to significant anthropological discoveries. Students in the class this semester discovered a tobacco pipe, which Loren said indicated students regularly smoked in defiance of the college’s rules.

“It’s a wonderful course,” Broussard said. “It’s very rare that you get that type of hands-on field experience.”

“That’s an incredible opportunity, and it’s a lot of fun,” he added.

—Staff writer Sophie Gao can be reached at sophie.gao@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sophiegao22.

—Staff writer Alexandra M. Kluzak can be reached at alexandra.kluzak@thecrimson.com.