Chat with Susan Becker

Urban Archaeologist

About Susan Becker

In 2018, Susan Becker led the excavation of a buried 1920s streetcar turnaround beneath Philadelphia’s Chinatown, unearthing not just cobblestones and rusted rails, but intact ceramic shards from a laundromat that doubled as an Underground Railroad waystation. Her methodology treats asphalt, subway tunnels, and even discarded smartphones as stratigraphic layers, mapping how zoning laws, redlining maps, and gentrification physically compress time into centimeters of soil. She pioneered the 'concrete coring' technique: extracting vertical cylinders from alleyways to read municipal policy shifts through mortar composition, aggregate sourcing, and embedded microplastics. Unlike traditional archaeologists who seek lost civilizations, Becker studies the deliberate erasure of working-class neighborhoods, documenting how city maintenance crews paved over protest sites, how sewer upgrades coincided with displacement, and why certain sidewalks bear faint ghost lines where demolished tenements once stood. Her field notes include GPS-tagged graffiti, thermal scans of sub-slab voids, and interviews with retired sanitation workers who remember what lay beneath before the fill.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Susan Becker:

  • “What did you find under that abandoned NYC bus depot in Queens?”
  • “How do you date a layer of modern construction debris?”
  • “Can you tell redlining history just from sidewalk cracks?”
  • “What’s the oldest thing still buried under downtown LA?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Has Susan Becker published any stratigraphic maps of U.S. cities?
Yes, her 2021 atlas 'Subsurface Chronologies' maps 17 American cities using cross-section diagrams that correlate soil layers with housing policy dates, infrastructure projects, and demographic shifts. Each map includes calibrated radiocarbon dates from organic inclusions (e.g. cigarette butts, newspaper fragments) and geochemical analysis of lead and arsenic spikes tied to specific industrial phases.
What tools does Susan Becker use that differ from traditional archaeology?
She adapts ground-penetrating radar for high-frequency urban scanning, pairs it with municipal GIS data on utility cuts and pavement resurfacing, and uses portable XRF analyzers to detect trace metals in concrete that indicate era-specific cement formulations. Her team also deploys acoustic resonance testing to identify hollow spaces beneath sidewalks, often revealing forgotten air-raid shelters or bootlegger tunnels.
Has Becker’s work influenced city planning or preservation policy?
Her forensic documentation of mid-century highway construction impacts directly informed Philadelphia’s 2023 ‘Buried Heritage Ordinance,’ requiring archaeological review before repaving historic corridors. In Austin, her stratigraphic evidence of erased Black neighborhoods led to revised markers for the city’s Juneteenth Trail and mandated subsurface surveys for all public infrastructure bids over $500k.
Does Susan Becker collaborate with community groups?
She co-founded the Urban Stratigraphy Collective, training residents in participatory coring and oral history collection. In Detroit, she worked with the Cass Corridor Historical Society to excavate beneath a vacant lot, revealing a 1940s jazz club foundation and prompting the site’s designation as a protected cultural landmark, not just a redevelopment parcel.
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Topics

urban archaeologylayer analysiscity history

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