Category Archives: Musings

PCSS Conference

by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

This past weekend I drove out to Harrisburg for the 63rd annual Pennsylvania Council for Social Studies (PCSS) conference. The conference theme this year was “Creating Global Citizens Through Issues Focused Instruction”.

Part of my public archaeology assistantship is to go to this conference to present to social studies teachers from all over the state. My contribution to the conference was a presentation on “The Crisis in Archaeological and Cultural Heritage in the Middle East”. The first question I asked my audience, “have any of you taught arpcss-conferencechaeology in your classrooms?” was received with side-glances and heads awkwardly turning to look at their neighbor to see if they had taught the subject. I took that as a resounding, “NO”. From there I began to discuss cultural heritage destruction, and back that up with several case studies. I began with two based in the Middle East concerning the Giant Buddha’s of Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan and Palmyra in Syria. These are two examples of religiously motivated destruction of cultural resources and heritage, but I didn’t want my audience to think that this only happens in the Middle East. I wanted to drive home that the destruction of cultural resources and heritage is a global issue. Not all destruction is religiously motivated, we also see looting and selling of antiquities on the black market in economically depressed countries, and individuals that loo

giant-buddhas

Giant Buddha of Bamiyan

t sites for their own personal collections. I continued to explain context and its importance in archaeology. When artifacts and features are looted, broken or completely destroyed, they lose their meaning and interpretive value. I ended the discussion by talking about Sarah Parcak, the satellite archaeologist that is using satellite imagery to compare maps over time that show increased looting, especially in Egypt. Parcak hopes to use these maps to prevent further looting of sites worldwide. Did I mention she is my hero? To read more about her research follow the link below!

looting

Two satellite images depicting increased looting holes at a site in Egypt between 2009 and 2012

My main goal at this conference was to get these teachers interested (and excited) in incorporating archaeology into their curriculum by providing resources that they can use in their classroom. One such lesson plan called, “Trash Talk” has students examine modern trash the way that archaeologists look at trash pits to make inferences about the people that were using the objects, and how they were used. I even found a lesson plan pertaining to context, which I will provide a link to below. I had fantastic social studies and history teachers growing up, but I do not recall being taught archaeology at all. I hope that my presentation opened the eyes of some of these teachers, veterans and newbies to a new way of presenting the past to their students.

Links:

Sarah Parcak- National Geographic fellow and satellite archaeologist

Context exercise

 

International Archaeology Day in a few words…

by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

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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!

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Prehistoric table and prehistoric artifacts

 

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Kids room making wampum and hand painting

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

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Flint knapping demo

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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

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 casecandy-corn, 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 thacandy-corn-munsellt 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

by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

munsell-book

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.

cat-munsell

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 yocat-hair-munsellu, 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

 

The Bronze Age in Northern Vietnam

by Genevieve Everett

By: Francis Allard

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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.

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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.

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.

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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!

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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.

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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…

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Yes, I can draw on an etch-a-sketch…

Voices from the Field – Hanna’s Town Sixteen Years Later: My Career has come full circle.

by Dr. Benjamin L. Ford

By David Breitkreutz

This summer I’ve been mostly keeping up with my thesis research – a spatial analysis of Hanna’s Town using geophysics. The IDS Multi-Array Stream X ground penetrating radar, the FM 256 Fluxgate Gradiometer, and the Syscal Kid electrical resistivity meter were employed to help determine the layout of the settlement, potentially locate evidence of the 1782 raid, and to determine the extent to which geophysical applications are useful in surveying large archaeological sites. The past few weeks I’ve been employed, with TRC, on a historic Phase II near Cumberland, Maryland. After work I’ve been analyzing the results of my geophysical investigations and actually writing the thesis.

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IDS Multi-Array Stream X GPR at Hanna’s Town.

While conducting background research, on previous archaeological and geophysical investigations at Hanna’s Town, I reminded myself that I worked at Hanna’s Town in the summer of 2000, while employed with Christine Davis Consultants, Inc. out of Verona, Pennsylvania. Enviroscan Inc. was sub-contracted to conduct geophysical investigations using magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar. This was the first geophysical investigation conducted at Hanna’s Town. Also, the project was my introduction to geophysical techniques and public archaeology.

That summer the Westmoreland County Historical Society sponsored their first archaeology day camp for children and teenagers, between the ages of 11-15. The students were treated to demonstrations by re-enactors, they screened dirt from our excavations, a few were allowed to “play” with the GPR, and the students were given field trips to Bushy Run. The most rewarding aspect of the project was teaching the students that had a genuine interest in archaeology. The most frustrating thing for me was debating, with the chaperons, why it’s unproductive to have the students collect cigarette butts at a Colonial site.

Over the course of the next sixteen years I became less condescending towards volunteers, avocationalists, students, and supervisors. I had learned that interest in archaeology can greatly aid in site preservation. Public archaeology/history can also generate a pride in local history. During my resistivity survey, earlier this summer, a WCHS volunteer re-enactor approached me asking me “can I help you.” I jokingly informed him that his help will be “greatly appreciated” and that I needed the “electrodes placed in 50cm intervals.” In the end he really didn’t want to help and only wanted to know if I had permission to be on the property. The re-enactor was there to guide students, from local elementary schools, around the site. There was at least six bus-loads of children per day at the site during the early summer days. It was great to see these field trips.

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Syscal Kid Electrical Resistivity Survey at Hanna’s Town

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article dated July 5, 2000.

While researching the Davis project I found an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, dated July 5 2000, titled High-tech ‘dig’ aims to find Hanna’s Town buildings . Unfortunately, the pictures from the newspaper article were too black to distinguish a younger and thinner Dave. Nonetheless I was seized with a sense of nostalgia. The “trip down memory lane” made me realize (or fear) that my entire career in archaeology has come full circle. Sixteen years later I am working on the same site, arguing with the same volunteers, while asking the same research questions using geophysical techniques. Within the article former WCHS Director James Steeley stated that the goal of the project was to locate where the houses and buildings “really were.” This is exactly the same research objectives as my thesis. In fact this dilemma has stifled all archaeologists that have conducted research at Hanna’s Town. The biggest lesson I learned here is that the results, and methods used, from an archaeological or geophysical investigation may not answer the research objectives set forth. Even if the research objectives weren’t accomplished it is still important to interpret the results from the data collected. I won’t divulge my preliminary results from my thesis research. But I will say that I keep on telling myself “a good thesis is a completed thesis”.

How Metal is Archaeological Theory?

by Cherilyn

METALBINFORD

Let me begin by addressing the students of the Applied Archaeology program – don’t let anyone scare you out of Dr. Phil’s seminar. Because it rules. The class is theory-heavy, but the first day of class involved discussion of tall, tongue-rolling, Vulcans. Just sayin.

For my next trick, I will clarify some confusing archaeological typology terms using heavy metal music.

As I struggle once more through the fiery depths of archaeological theory in Dr. Phil’s seminar – the metal gods shine light upon dense articles by Brew, Steward and Setzler, McKern, Krieger, Willey and Phillips, Ford, Spaulding, and Binford. If you’ve been forced to familiarize yourself with these names before, grisly images of death and destruction may come to mind as well as the great typology debate – fought across peer-reviewed journal lines. A long winded battle, where “the screams of anguished authors who fear[ed] that their brain children [were] being murdered by reviewers” could be heard ringing through the notes and comments of American Antiquity and American Anthropologist in the early 1950s (Ford 1954).

As we stage dive into the history of typology in archaeology, and before you start banging your head against your desk – I know, theory can be brutal. But Willey and Phillips actually started to make sense to me after I applied the terminology to heavy metal typology.  And it offered some real life advice: define your freaking terminology, people. Clearly.

Maybe this is TMI, but this past week as I was wading through the OkCupid dating scene – the old typology debate popped back into my head. (Yup, this is how my brain works…) More specifically, the advice that Willey and Phillips so wordily conveyed about the importance of defining your freaking terminology. I had many-a-conversation with dungeon masters and metal-heads alike over what metal bands they prefer over others.

Now, I am the first one to admit – I suck at metal typology. Going into this – I had no idea where hair metal stopped and thrash metal began. And I figured out why this is so confusing. Nobody knows what the heck they are talking about. And when one person says ‘black metal’ the other person has a completely different idea of what that means. One man’s death-doom is another man’s stoner-metal. Not one of these people, including myself could define the attributes of any one sub-genre of heavy metal. This made for very confusing conversation.

So I looked to the nerds of Wikipedia – because only they would devote so much time to writing the specific attributes of heavy metal sub-genres. (Ian Christe, Robert Walser, Garry Sharpe-Young, and Paul Du Noyer are some folks who have written about the evolution of metal and other genres of music.)

This is what I came up with (CLICK TO ENLARGE!):

metal typology

The chart describes types of heavy metal, complete with the attributes that define those types, and a few examples of those types. For instance, thrash can be distinguished by overall aggression, fast percussive beats, low register guitar riffs, and overlaid shredding – think Slayer and Megadeth. (Hahahaha – ‘overlaid shredding’ is a great attribute!)

Willey and Phillips’ discussions from their book, Method and Theory in Archaeology use the term ‘archaeology units’ instead of the word ‘type’ in an effort to keep definitions clear (Willey and Phillips 1958). Some of these terms are still used today and with similar meaning. So lets look at this in terms of our ‘metal units’ laid out in the above chart. According to Willey and Phillips’ terminology, our metal units would be considered traditions. Traditions are found across time, with a persistent configuration of technology, where specific elements are continuous. Where some attributes are shared among the separate units, they contrast enough to be separate entities and some occur at slightly later periods in time than others. So the traditions of heavy metal from the chart include hair metal, thrash, power metal, death metal, black metal, doom, and stoner metal. Stemming from the tradition of thrash, death metal emerges. The tradition of death metal is exemplified by heavy distortion, low tuned guitars, minor keys, key and time changes, and deep growling vocals. (These attributes are hilarious.)

This distinction of metal music is in contrast with the concept of the horizon. Horizons spread across space rapidly and are temporally similar – meaning they appear only in a short period of time and then disappear. This could be better likened to dance crazes as Dr. Phil so eloquently described and then nimbly demonstrated by doing ‘The Freddy.’ Look it up. Other examples include such favorites as The Watusi, The Electric Slide, and The Macarena. Points to you if you know all three.

So there you have it – archaeological theory applied to metal typology. I think this means I win. Maybe next week we can discuss the phases and sub-phases of prog rock and fusion.

PS

Keep your eyes peeled for the new archaeology department T-shirts, designed by yours truly. I’ll be ordering those at some point in February. Also – if there is want for repeats of last years T-Shirt, let me know. I need to order at least 10 for a reprint.

Metal Munsells:

Dude’s hair from Iron Maiden album, Killers: 5Y 7/8

Blood from Cannibal Corpse album, Butchered at Birth: 10R 4/8

Background of Witchcraft album, The Alchemist: 5Y 8/2

 

References Cited

Ford, James A.

1954 ‘Letter, “Spaulding’s Review of Ford,” American Anthropologist 56:109-112.

Willey, Gordon R,  Philip Phillips

1958 Method and Theory in American Archaeology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.