International Archaeology Day in a few words…

By: Genevieve Everett

Atlatl demo on the Oak Grove

This past weekend in the midst of midterms and homecoming we held our International Archaeology Day event for the public. It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm fall day. Campus was abuzz with students and alumni headed to the game, and along the way they had a chance throw darts/spears with an atlatl, “a tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in dart-throwing, and includes a bearing surface which allows the user to store energy during the throw”. It’s basically like throwing darts at the bar on steroids (kind of, sort of). It’s really fun, and gives you a perspective on the concentration and precision that must have gone into the use of this tool by early humans. Did I mention that it’s REALLY fun!?

After a vigorous workout of throwing darts you could head into McElhaney Hall on the ground floor where undergraduate and graduate students were set up to teach you about everything from micro-artifacts to what a flotation/wet lab is. I won’t bore you with a description of everything, instead I will share photos of the days events, because that’s much more exciting! Before I do that, I hope that everyone that was able to attend had a fun and educational experience, and we look forward to seeing you next year!

Prehistoric table and prehistoric artifacts

Kids room making wampum and hand painting

Historic archaeology, zooarch lab, micro-artifacts, and Zaakiyah handing out dirt cups!

Flint knapping demo

Chris giving a GPR demo on the Oak Grove.

Special thanks to: Susanna Haney for coming out and giving the flint knapping demo, Lori and Andy Majorsky & Margie and Frank for putting on the atlatl demo! LAST, BUT NOT LEAST: All of the students that participated in the event!!

Cited material:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower

I Can Munsell That Pt. 2

Oct13 by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

Side note: THIS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15th from 12-3pm at McElhaney Hall on the Ground Floor is our INTERNATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY DAY event! Come one, come all!

What’s Halloween without candy? I remember having the occasional box of raisins or
bag of pretzels thrown in my pillow case, and for most children, this was unacceptable! When I think of Halloween candy, I think of CANDY CORN! For those that have never had the tiny morsel’s, they are pure sugar shaped into what you’re supposed to assume is little kernels of corn? Who knows? Whatever it is, I love it! Time to Munsell!

So, as you can see in the photograph, I ‘dissected’ the candy corn into three parts: white, orange and yellow. I pulled out the handy, dandy Munsell and put the white piece to the test, and guess what? There is a ‘WHITE’ section at the very back of the Munsell Color Book. I wanted to know what makes soil white, and this is what I found out, “Clear or white (soils), usually due to the presence of calcium and magnesium carbonates, gypsum or other more soluble salts”. Cool! So, the white piece came out (to me) as 2.5Y9.5/1….WHITE! Next, I took the yellow piece of the candy corn and tested it against the several yellowish colors. Yellows in the Munsell vary from straight up yellow to varying hues of reddish yellows and brownish yellows. The closest I could come to this bright yellow candy was 2.5Y8/8…YELLOW! Last, but no least, the orange piece. First I want to point out that the word orange does not show up in the Munsell Color Book ONCE. According to the Munsell color blog, “orange isn’t part of Munsell’s primary hue color. The color is represented in Munsell’s “intermediate hues”—the colors between two primary hues. So the color orange is referred to as “yellow-red” (YR) because it is located between the primary hues, red and yellow”. This does not mean that orange doesn’t exist naturally in the natural world. SO, this led me to look at the reddish yellows. I went back and forth between 5YR and 7.5YR…and I decided the orange that is candy corn orange does not fit any of the Munsell colors. It’s its own unique combination of yellow 5 and red 3 dye!

To learn more about ‘hue, value, and chroma’, click the first link “Soil Color Never Lies”, below!

Cited material:

http://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/sss/2014/03/30/soil-color-never-lies/

The Color Orange Touches Off a Testy Debate

I Can Munsell That

Oct6 by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

I’ve decided to continue something that a previous poster started, and that is to Munsell something other than soil!

First, what is the Munsell color system? The Munsell color system was created by Dr. Albert H. Munsell (1858-1918), an accomplished artist and inventor. “Munsell’s work in developing a systematic approach to teaching and communicating was influential in evolving color science theory at the turn of the century.” We as archaeologists use the Munsell color system to describe soil colors in a profile. I won’t go too deep into this subject, because, well, I am not well versed in it (yet!), but if you want to learn more, I suggest taking the soils class when it is made available.

Now for the fun part! I’ve been thinking, about what to Munsell, and I came to a conclusion, a dangerous one…my vicious cat, Isabelle! I’ve decided that this entire series, at least for the month of October will be ‘Halloween’ themed, so, what better way to do that than with a black (or is she?!) cat. Isabelle decided to be extremely cooperative today with this photo shoot until I put a trowel near her body. Luckily cats shed, A WHOLE LOT, and I was able to find clumps of her hair on the floor.

In the field, you take a small piece of soil from the profile with your trowel, and pack it down so that you can place it under one of the many color chips in the book. NEVER TOUCH THE COLOR CHIP, because they will fade. It usually helps to either be in full sunlight or full shade, because I’m telling you, many soil colors look like various shades in the book. For example, there are three shades of ‘yellowish brown’ (10YR 5/4, 5/6, 5/8), all of which look pretty much the same, so do yourself a favor and make it a little easier on the eyes. In my case, I took the wadded up ball of fur, and tested it under various color chips. 5YR 2.5/1, black? No. 7.5YR 2.5/1? No. 2.5Y2.5/1, black? YES! Okay, this is not scientific by any means, but it looked the closest to me, and since no one else has tested a Munsell on cat fur before, I’m going to stick with this answer.

What ‘Halloween’ themed thing, blob or monster would you like to see put to the Munsell next week? Leave comments below!

I will leave you with a really cool website, Munsell.com. Check out their color blog! The link below was a project they did to describe the unique soil colors of several National Parks in the United States for the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service:

The Soil Colors of the National Parks

Quoted material:

Albert H. Munsell & The Munsell Color Theory

International Archaeology Day 2016

Sep29 by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

International Archaeology Day is upon us! Saturday, October 15^th to be exact. Get excited!! Dr. Lara and I have been meeting weekly to discuss logistics, and reaching out to undergraduate and graduate students to get involved. Some of you have participated in the past, and for some of you it’s your first time. Our event will include Historic and Prehistoric archaeology, a GPR demo, flintknapping, Zooarch, a kids table, and much more!

This is our chance to show the community what we know, and why archaeology is important, and connects us to the past. It is not only our duty to educate the community, but make it fun at the same time. If we just put a bunch of artifacts on a table and tell our guests what they are and where they came from, that isn’t interesting or fun. We as archaeologists know that they are interesting, but how can we make them come alive?

We can ask people to come to Archaeology Day, even bribe them with snacks, but we want them to walk away saying, “Wow, that was really cool! I want to get involved in my local archaeology chapter” or “I am changing majors tomorrow”. Most importantly, we want them to walk away thinking that archaeological sites are a valuable resource that should be protected. Now, I know that isn’t going to happen with everyone, but that is how we should think about this day. It’s an opportunity to show the public why we do what we do.

We look forward to seeing you all there!

The Bronze Age in Northern Vietnam

Sep22 by Genevieve Everett

By: Francis Allard

Bronze artifact from Hanoi

During the month of July, I spent one week in Hanoi (Vietnam) with a colleague who teaches at another university. Our objective was to meet with archaeologists at the Institute of Archaeology of Vietnam to discuss the establishment of a new project that focuses on the development of Bronze Age societies in northern Vietnam, from the earliest evidence of bronze metallurgy in that area (in about 1200 BCE) to the last centuries of the first millennium BCE (at which point large complex bronzes such as drums were being manufactured). Although I’ve worked mostly in southern China since the 1990s, I’ve also made multiple trips to northern Vietnam over the past 25 years. My interest in the archaeology of that area is in fact not surprising, since these two adjoining areas (southern China and northern Vietnam) share many cultural traits with one another.

Dog with a 2,000 year old decorated brick (village near Hanoi, Vietnam)

While in Vietnam, my colleague and I also met with a number of archaeologists at universities and museums, visits which resulted in us gaining access to over 20 bronze artifacts or fragments dating to the period we’re interested in. As you can see in the photos, it’s possible (and sometimes preferable) to work with incomplete artifacts or even small fragments (as long as we know which type of artifact it came from). We were given permission to take these objects out of Vietnam and are planning to conduct XRF (X-ray fluorescence) analysis on them to determine their copper, tin and lead content, information that can then be used to understand how knowledge of metallurgy was transmitted among craft specialists and adapted to meet local conditions. Following the completion of the XRF analysis, our plan it to return to Vietnam to do the same with additional bronze objects and to discuss with our Vietnamese colleagues the future expansion of the project to include field activities.

I’m New Here.

Sep15 by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

Hi, I’m Genevieve, or Gen! One of the first things that people notice about me are the tattoos on my arms. Without fail someone asks me about them, especially my most prominent one, a trowel on my right forearm. As you know, once you get a tattoo, well, you’re pretty much stuck with it. And so, it has become a permanent reminder to live up to my own personal goal of doing exactly what I want to with my life and career, archaeology.

A little more decorative than your typical trowel.

After graduating from my undergraduate with a double BA in Anthropology and History, I spent several years working in the service industry. I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my degree. One day in 2010 while bartending at my old job, making Bloody Mary after Bloody Mary, I struck up a conversation with an acquaintance that had been working in archaeology for years. I told her I had been looking into field schools around the country, so, she gave me her card, and on the back of she wrote, “STATE CONSERVATION RESCUE ARCHAEOLOGY PROGRAM (S.C.R.A.P)”. A year later I found the card (I still have it) in an old recipe box amongst other pieces of scribbled on paper and ticket stubs. So, the summer of June 2011 I drove up to my first field school at a Clovis site in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and never looked back!

At my first field school through the State Conservation Rescue Archaeology Program (SCRAP) in 2011.

Besides SCRAP, I spent a few years going into the Temple University anthropology lab to help clean historic artifacts from Elfreth’s Alley (the longest continuously occupied block in the country) in Philadelphia. One of the PhD. students had organized a fantastic public archaeology lab day for volunteers with all experience levels to come help. In the summer we were also provided with an opportunity to come out to the alley and excavate behind the museum.

A photo of me screening behind the Elfreth’s Alley museum in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

As much as I enjoyed spending my free time taking part in these experiences, I decided it was time to step it up. The next step was to begin the process of applying to graduate programs. I told myself, “I either have to be in graduate school or working another CRM job before I am thirty”. So here I am, on the cusp of turning 30, and I have never been so sure of my decision to make archaeology a career until now.

My life is not all archaeology, so I will leave you with this…

Yes, I can draw on an etch-a-sketch…

Trowels and Tribulations: IUP's Archaeology Blog

Author Archives: Genevieve Everett

International Archaeology Day in a few words…

I Can Munsell That Pt. 2

I Can Munsell That

International Archaeology Day 2016

The Bronze Age in Northern Vietnam

I’m New Here.