Monthly Archives: September 2021

September Colloquium: What We Did This Summer/Recently

by Bridget Roddy

This Wednesday, the 22nd, six of our Applied Archaeology graduate students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania presented at our monthly colloquium on What We Did This Summer/Recently. We heard from some amazingly talented students, eager to share their adventures and discoveries!

First year graduate student Emma Frauendienst.

First year graduate student Emma Frauendienst.

After a great introduction from Dr. Lara Homsey-Messer, Emma Frauendienst started us off with her presentation about her summer fieldwork at the Poverty Point World Heritage Site. Poverty Point, one of the largest Archaic Period sites in North America, is located in Louisiana. Her work, titled Downhole Geophysical Investigations of the West Plaza Rise at the Poverty Point World Heritage Site, began after receiving a grant, and facing both covid and flooding setbacks. Her team extracted 21 new soil cores, focusing on the West Plaza Rise to determine if it was a natural or constructed feature. After analysis of the cores and magnetic susceptibility data showing heavy cultural fill, it was determined that the West Plaza Rise was culturally constructed!

First year graduate students Mikala Hardie and Richard Farley.

Mikala Hardie and Richard Farley then discussed their experiences as Graduate Assistants during IUP’s Newport Field School. Newport, a small shipping town located along the Conemaugh River, was occupied from around 1790 into the early 19th century. The excavation began with shovel test pits, ground penetrating radar, and several test units, before excavation units were opened. The woods crew, led by Mikala, worked to find the walls of the general store, while also uncovering artifacts such as, porcelain, faunal remains, mochaware, and a builder’s trench, to name a few. The field crew, supervised by Richard, focused on finding the blacksmith shop and hotel, along the way uncovering post holes, slag, redware, pearlware, creamware, and transfer printed earthenware, among other things. The field school utilized photogrammetry, magnetometry, GPS, and a total station to also collect valuable information about the site. If anyone wants to know more about what it’s like as a graduate assistant at a field school, just ask Mikala and Richard, who also filled out forms and logs, took lots of pictures, and organized and supervised those working at the site!

Second year graduate student Ashely Nagle and first year graduate student Sonja Rossi-Williams.

Ashley Nagle and Sonja Rossi-Williams presented next about their time spent as Graduate Assistants in Lower Saxony, Germany at IUP’s Forensic Field School! From July to mid-August, they worked at a World War 2 B-24 aircraft crash site! They used GPR to first define the sides of their 2X2, and then used shovels more than trowels to remove the soil in their units. The team learned about archaeological methods and practices used in Germany and took several excursions across Germany, including to Hannover, Berlin, and Munich, making this an incredible cultural experience as well as archaeological. They did not find what they were looking for, an unaccounted-for soldier, but they did make progress on the site itself. The team were even featured in a German newspaper! In the future, the site will most likely undergo more excavations, hopefully by IUP students!

First year graduate student Luke Nicosia.

Luke Nicosia was the final presenter, recounting his internship in July and August this summer with the Landmark Society of Western New York, a historic preservation agency.  Founded in 1937, it is one of the oldest such societies in the US and seeks to advise property and homeowners on historic preservation planning and awareness, raise funding, and protect local historic sites. Luke conducted fee-for-service survey work and worked on their library projects. He edited site narratives and report drafts, finished reconnaissance on a survey on village properties, did covenant review, and worked in the library scanning and inventorying. He finished a massive slides project after scanning and digitizing over 80,000 slides over the course of many years (this is not his first time interning with the Landmark Society)! He also mentioned that there are many ways one can get involved in the field of historical preservation, many that align with the field of archaeology!

Thank you to all the presenters and everyone who attended our first colloquium of What We Did This Summer/Recently!

Archaeology and Climate Change

by Bridget Roddy

Hurricane Ida raged from August 26th– September 3rd, creating havoc and devastation throughout the United States. Ida hit Louisiana first, but continued Northeast, causing flooding, and taking the lives of over sixty people across the country. Even here is Indiana, Pennsylvania, we experienced Ida’s continued wrath with several inches of rain.

Many scientists attribute the increase of storms such as Ida to climate change. With the burning of fossil fuels mainly from transportation (which includes not only vehicles, but also ships, planes, and trains), electricity production, and industry, we see the atmosphere and oceans warming up. This leads to more moisture in the atmosphere and more frequency in storms across the states, as water vapors are more easily able to be evaporated into the atmosphere from the oceans.

Tracks and intensities of all storms reaching Category 4 or 5 intensity (>59 m/sec) in the GFDL hurricane model downscaling experiments. Results are shown for the control climate (upper left); CMIP3/A1B 18-model ensemble late 21st century (lower left); and CMIP5/RCP4.5 18-model ensemble early (upper right) or late (lower right) 21st century. All results shown are based on model version GFDL. Track colors indicate the intensity category during the storm’s lifetime.

The question remains, how does climate change affect archaeology?

Archaeologists face changing coastlines, the warming of the artic and alpine regions, and severe storms like Ida. With sea levels rising, floods increasing, and coasts eroding, archeologists are at risk of losing sites along bodies of water. Melting ice caps and glaciers are releasing sites, artifacts, and even human remains from their frozen and preserving tombs. Escalations in dangerous weather events can affect sites through harsh rainfall, landslides, and even intense winds. For example, although stone is quite durable, more exposure to the elements like water will amplify deterioration from dissolving salts.

What is being done and what can we do?

Sites can be surveyed, excavated, backfilled, sheltered, but the sad reality is that not everything is going to be protected, preserved, or saved. However, recently a new approach to this issue is being addressed by a team of researchers led by anthropologist Ariane Burke from the University of Montreal, to pursue the archaeology of climate change. This group uses archaeological and climate records to determine how our ancestors faced and surpassed environmental challenges. Archaeology can bring a new understanding to how humans in the past adapted to changing climates and use that knowledge to inform smaller regions of strategies to address these global environmental changes.

For example, a solution put forth has been to study indigenous groups farming methods as a shift from industrial farming, and their traditional fire management strategies to help decrease wildfire threats. Many surmise that in places like Mesopotamia, sea levels may also have risen, leading to developments towards irrigation and cities. Perhaps there are new ideas not yet explored, or innovations not yet discovered that could provide protections against climate change. Researchers believe solutions might also lie in climate models, which are experimented with using data from the past for solutions to future scenarios.

Whatever your views on climate change, archaeologists need to be aware of the effect storms and severe weather can have on archaeological sites. Using cultural diversity as a means to find new solutions is a great start. Archaeologists can use the past to help people face climate change today in new and innovative ways.

For Further Reading:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/09/03/hurricane-ida-numbers-surge-wind-pressure-damage/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/29/how-climate-change-helped-make-hurricane-ida-one-louisianas-worst/
https://www.indianagazette.com/news/police_emergency_and_courts/idas-effects-arrive-in-indiana-county/article_b649d9d9-f3ea-5533-b61e-fd9158f453b7.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-hurricane-ida-got-so-big-so-fast/https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
https://patch.com/california/san-francisco/how-climate-change-affects-archaeology
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2021/07/23/how-archaeology-could-help-deal-with-a-new-old-enemy-climate-change/?sh=20935410686f
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/30/e2108537118

 

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Never Forget

by Bridget Roddy

Tomorrow marks the 20th Anniversary of what we now refer to as 9/11. The horrid attack on The World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York is remembered as one of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S soil. The lives lost that day will forever be remembered, with almost 3,000 taken that morning.

9/11 Memorial Plaza, set where the original Twin Towers stood. (9/11 memorial plaza – Bing images)

An article from National Geographic, published this month, discusses the hundreds of thousands of artifacts that historians and archaeologists sought to recover months later. The artifacts missing “told the origin story of New York and the history of the enslaved men and women and immigrant workers who built the city into a global powerhouse.” Urban Archaeologist Sherrill Wilson ran the African Burial Ground project from the Six World Trade building that was destroyed from the fall of the North Tower during 9/11.  The Six World Trade had a “large archaeology lab used to study artifacts unearthed during city construction.”

The African Burial Ground was uncovered in 1991, showing the presence of a large African community and the horrors of slavery that contributed a great deal to the building of the city. It now rests under Manhattan’s financial district. The plot of six-acres was given to freed Africans by Dutch colonists in the early 1600s, as a place for the Africans to bury their dead. More than 15,000 people were buried there with the passing of 150 years. Bones revealed the nasty circumstances the enslaved faced, their teeth shaving traditions erased and their bones fractured. The documentation, analysis, and artifacts, of the study of this site were stored in the Six World Trade building.

A map showing the location of the African Burial Ground and Five Points Neighborhood locations.

Also in 1991, the remnants of Five Points, “one of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods and 19th-century Manhattan’s most notorious slum,” were discovered. This site gave the archaeological record artifacts from the working-class, more than 850,00 of them! These artifacts were also in the basement laboratory of Six World Trade. The studied artifacts showed a more understated side to those that lived there, with children’s toys and matching dishes, alluding to a life more sought on just “trying to dig themselves out of poverty,” or that some were not as impoverished as originally presumed.

September 11th, 2001 also destroyed the archives of Helen Keller, records of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and art by Rodin and Picasso. While the human remains of the African Burial Ground had already been transported to Howard University in D.C., much of the other artifacts and Five Points artifacts were buried. Nearly all the African Burial Ground artifacts were recovered, but what remained of the Five Points collection was records, the artifacts themselves demolished.

Today, a monument marks the African Burial Ground and researchers are even studying soil samples to study the human microbiome for some people who lived and died almost 400 years ago! It was also later discovered that 18 of the Five Points artifacts had been lent to the archdiocese of New York in 2000. These objects are now at the Museum of the City of New York, including the “prized” teacup artifact with the image of Father Matthew, an Irish priest.

The Father Mathew teacup, one of 18 surviving artifacts of the Five Points collection. (teacup_e4c9a1af69.jpg (712×397) (cuny.edu))

The Museum of the City of New York and the 9/11 Memorial Museum house relics from the history of September 11th, preserving wreckage and memorial artifacts to remind the world of not only the destruction from that day, but also the heroism. While the “loss of understanding ourselves and where we came from” in the archaeological world occurred that day, the human lives lost was certainly the greater tragedy.  Please take a moment to remember and reflect on those who were taken and the events of that day.

IUP dedication marker.

 

Find more detail see the original article:

The archaeological treasures that survived 9/11 (nationalgeographic.com)

 

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Hello Everyone! A Mini Introduction

by Bridget Roddy

Happy Labor Day! I hope everyone, especially the archaeologists out there, are getting plenty of rest today! My name is Bridget Roddy, and I am the new Public Archaeology Graduate Assistant. I am starting my first year in the graduate program for Applied Archaeology here at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I completed my undergrad degree in 2020 from Ohio Wesleyan University, double majoring in Sociology/Anthropology and Psychology and minoring in International Studies. During my time there I received a grant to travel to Romania for a month for an archaeological excavation at the Roman fort of Halmyris. This strengthened my interest in archaeology, leading me here to IUP’s Master’s Program. I participated in the Newport Field School this summer, as well. My other interests and hobbies include, running, art, reading, photography, and traveling. I am excited to get started and if anyone has any questions or concerns about the blog, or if you are interested in submitting something to this page, please feel free to reach out to me through my email bzxcc@iup.edu!