From the Field 2007
Week 5, June 18-22
Reported by Abby Chrismer & Caroline Clemens
Marian admires the patent tongs displayed at the Rock Hall Museum.
Mr. Bill Betts, curator of Tolchester Revisited and Chair of the Museums of Rock Hall board, explains the history of Tolchester before students Maureen, Marian, Anna, and Courtney enter the museum.
Iron Hill Jasper Quarry.
Ciera walks through the prehistoric exhibit at the Pennsylvania State Museum.
Campers at Summer Days Math & Science Camp for Girls cleaning artifacts in the lab.
A camper from Summer Days Math & Science Camp for Girls attacks Murray the mastodon using an atl-atl.
During the fifth week of field school, students spent their time in the field, in the classroom, and on the road. The week was filled with field trips to museums and sites that complemented the information covered in lecture and our projects in the field. When students were not excavating or surveying along the Sassafras River, they could be found at Iron Hill Jasper Quarry in Newark, Delaware, Tolchester Revisted, the Waterman's Museum, and the Rock Hall Museum (all three in Rock Hall, Maryland), the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg, or the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis. We also had a number of visitors this week, including the Summer Days Math & Science Camp for Girls in grades 6-9, a one week program offered by Echo Hill Outdoor School.
The Washington College Public Archaeology Lab has participated in the camp for the past nine years, and Elizabeth Seidel, director of the lab, had worked with the organization for four years prior at an archaeological site on the Western Shore. During the girls' visit this week, students Robyn Levitan and Emily Aiken joined the campers and counselors at the Custom House Tuesday morning, assisting Darrin Lowery and Teresa Fewlass in their activities with the girls. These included a presentation on flint knapping, hunting techniques with the atl-atl (spear thrower), the cleaning and processing of artifacts, and an explanation of our predictive model and surveying projects.
In the field and on the road
Our fifth week started on Monday morning, as we headed to Newark, Delaware to visit Iron Hill, which is a well-known jasper quarry we have discussed in lecture. Although it was hot and humid, we walked around the forest with Darrin Lowery and he showed the class where we could find large amounts of jasper, a material used in local projectile point manufacture. The on-site lecture and the quarry were really interesting. The jasper (a red chert) really stood out throughout the landscape, making the forest unique.
On Tuesday, June 19, Astra took the majority of us to visit the three museums of Rock Hall. The first one we went to was Tolchester Revisited. This small museum had a lot of history about old "downtown" Tolchester. Even though there are not many remainders of the amusement area now, all the pictures and displays really painted a mental picture of how nice the park once was. Bill Betts, who is the curator of Tolchester Revisited and Chairman of the Board of the Museums of Rock Hall, joined us in our tour of the Museum. Mr. Betts expressed a lot of passion for the area, which was evident not only in the arrangement of the Museum itself, but also in his basic knowledge of Old Tolchester. After Tolchester Revisited we moved on to explore the Rock Hall Museum and Waterman's Museum.
Due to the humidity and heat and rain once again, by the middle of the week we decided to visit the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg. After a long car ride, we finally arrived and walked around the city during our lunch hour. When we met up at the museum, we went directly upstairs to the Anthropology and Archaeology Exhibit, which was really well designed. Every showcase had great diagrams of physical objects, including artifacts and other materials. The showcases that illustrated the different eras of time were not only specific and educational, but also really interesting to see. For the rest of the day, we wandered through the different exhibits, such as the mammal and geology exhibits.
On Thursday, Teresa and Darrin took the class out to the Sassafras Site to continue our excavations. The majority of the students had not yet had a chance to dig so there was instruction in various topics including paperwork, different digging techniques, and reasoning, as the more experienced students continued the excavations. Throughout the day we focused on digging different units below the plow-zone and into the subsoil. Some photographers from Washington College joined us that afternoon and got some candid shots of our daily activities in the field.
By the end of the week, on Friday, most students continued to excavate along the Sassafras River. Brynn also took a small group of people to the State Archives in Annapolis to conduct research. On the Sassafras that same day, Darrin took a group to walk more fields towards the south end of the farm. The fields had been surveyed the previous year, but the exercise illustrated how much more can rise to the surface as the fields are tilled each year. In the fields we found a couple different types of projectile points as well as some flakes and other kinds of small material artifacts.