Community Archaeology Project Uncovers Colonial Life

This week, an important archaeology project gets underway in Northampton, Massachusetts, and community members are rolling up their sleeves to help.

Citizens of the small New England town have been invited to participate in "Digging Northampton," a community excavation project at the historic Parsons House on Bridge Street, from May 19 through June 6. 

Archaeology graduate students from the University of Massachusetts are heading up the project. They've recruited nearby neighbors as well as children from local schools to help uncover, clean, and keep detailed records of the artifacts. Linda Zeigenbein of the Archaeological Services at UMass told local news source MassLive.com she's not sure what will be discovered during the dig, but she's hopeful to get some insight into how Colonial women and children survived when the town was first established, and resources were scarce. 

Parsons House was built in 1719, and is scheduled for a major rehabilitation in the coming years. But historical preservation restrictions require that all artifacts are removed from the grounds before a new foundation is laid. The team will pay special attention to the the ground beneath the home's original kitchen, where they may discover animal bones discarded while cooking, crockery and more. 

For Zeigenbien, the most important part of the project is engaging the community in this important period of history. "My interest is creating people who want to be stewards of historic sites, "she explained. "The way to get this is to bring people in to see how important the work is." 

The public can take guided tours of Parsons House and check out the excavation project May 23rd, May 30th, and June 6th from 10am to 2pm. To learn more about this project and find out how you can get involved, visit the Digging Northampton blog. 

If you're interested in community archaeology and North American excavation sites, browse these articles: 

New Ethical Statements on Site Preservation for North American Archaeologists 

Community Archaeology: General Methods and Standards of Practice >

Cannon you believe it? The time and money it takes to conserve artefacts salvaged from shipwrecks

You may have seen in the news last week that further diving at the Elizabethan wreck that sank off Alderney in the Channel Islands, UK in the 16th Century has been carried out by the Alderney Maritime Trust and staff from Bournemouth University. They have uncovered three cannon and "substantial ship timbers" in addition to over 1,000 artefacts that were salvaged from the first dive to the wreck in 2008. The unnamed ship sunk in November 1592 and was discovered by local fishermen Bertie Costeril and Fred Shaw in 1977.

Mike Harrison, coordinator trustee, said more work on the site was going to go ahead next summer and explained the large lapse in time between dives by stating that "[t]hings move very slowly with marine archaeology, the work we've done in the last few years... has been conserving objects." However he also noted that "it's very, very expensive... we've got a lot of fundraising to do, it's tens of thousands of pounds, conserving a cannon is £10,000 for example."

I took a look in our online archive to read more about conservation in maritime archaeology and came across the article 'In situ conservation of cannon and anchors on shipwreck sites' by Ian Donald MacLeod in a 1996 issue of Studies in Conservation. In the article the author explains how a wrought iron anchor and a cast iron carronade from the wreck of HMS Sirius (1790) received In situ electrolysis treatment using sacrificial anodes in the shallow waters off Norfolk Island in the South Pacific Ocean.This pre-treatment stabilises the artifacts and ensures that they can be safely recovered and transported.

Monitoring on the seabed and in the laboratory showed that approximately 80% of the chlorides had been removed from the carronade before excavation. The cathodic
pre-treatment results in a significant improvement in the quality of the surface of the metals. He argues it is possible to maintain artifacts on the seabed by continued use of sacrificial anodes.

>> Read the full article for free

The Return of Aesthetics to Archaeology



Ancient Egyptian funerary mask at the
Oriental Museum, Durham University

Why is ‘aesthetics’ a dirty word in archaeology? Can its archaeological study be reinvigorated, particularly with the help of philosophers and anthropologists?

 

Come and join the discussion at a workshop to be held at the University of London’s Senate House on Thursday 28^th and Friday 29^th November 2013.

 

The workshop is organised within the framework of an AHRC-funded Research Network Group project focused on ‘The Ethics and Aesthetics of Archaeology’. 

 

This wider project brings together philosophers, archaeologists and museum and heritage practitioners in order to focus on the relation between ethics and aesthetics, and explore how this relation shapes the understanding and practice of archaeological stewardship. The main premise underlying our multidisciplinary project is the idea that research into the ethics of stewardship (including moral obligations, duties and respect) will be enhanced significantly by an increased understanding of the role played by the aesthetic character of historical objects in influencing the moral relations we have with them and their makers.

 

The project is directed by two members of staff from Durham University: Dr Elisabeth Schellekens Dammann (Department of Philosophy) and Dr Robin Skeates (Department of Archaeology). They are assisted by Dr. Andreas Pantazatos (Co-Director of the Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage).

 

The London workshop is generously sponsored by the University of London’s Institute of Philosophy. It is open to all, free of charge. Visit our project website for further details.

 

If you intend to attend, do please let us know, by sending an email to Dr Elisabeth Schellekens Dammann.

Digging Deeper: Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials



Female burial at St Helen's Fishergate, York

Every now and then 'Can you dig it?' digs deep into the Maney Publishing online archive to highlight articles from past issues that proved to be very popular with our subscribers. In light of next week's International Medieval Congress in Leeds, I chose 'Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials', published in Medieval Archaeology (Volume 52, 2008) it was the winner of the 2008 Martyn Jope Award. This paper examines patterns in the placement of apotropaic objects and materials in high- to late-medieval burials in Britain (11th to 15th centuries). It was written by Professor Roberta Gilchrist, Head of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences at the University of Reading.

It develops an interdisciplinary classification to identify: (1) healing charms and protective amulets; (2) objects perceived to have occult natural power; (3) 'antique' items that were treated as possessing occult power; and (4) rare practices that may have been associated with the demonic magic of divination or sorcery. Making comparisons with amulets deposited in conversion-period graves of the 7th to 9th centuries it is argued that the placement of amulets with the dead was strategic to Christian belief, intended to transform or protect the corpse. The conclusion is that material traces of magic in later medieval graves have a connection to folk magic, performed by women in the care of their families, and drawing on knowledge of earlier traditions. This popular magic was integrated with Christian concerns and tolerated by local clergy, and was perhaps meant to heal or reconstitute the corpse, to ensure its reanimation on judgement day, and to protect the vulnerable dead on their journey through purgatory.

The following is an excerpt from the article's introduction:

Silver half penny of Edward III

"Archaeologists have been reluctant to consider how medieval people expressed supernatural and spiritual beliefs through the material practices of life and death. A rare contribution on this theme was Ralph Merrifield’s The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, in which he diagnosed a ‘ritual phobia’among historical archaeologists. With the advent of a more scientific, processual archaeology in the 1970s and 1980s, the study of magic — with its superstitious and folkloric connotations — was relegated to the archaeological fringe. The topic has retained some currency in the study of conversion-period burials of the 7th to 9th centuries, although even in this context magic has been dismissed as superstitious ritual, rather than examined in relation to sacred beliefs."

>> Read the full article for free

"Stuff matters": The crucial work of the American Institute for Conservation - Collections Emergency Response Team

An interview with Eric Pourchot, Institutional Advancement Director at the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation

Why was the American Institute for Conservation - Collections Emergency Response Team (AIC-CERT) established?

It came out of the experience we had after Hurricane Katrina as many of our members from AIC had served on teams that went down to the New Orleans and Gulf Coast area to help cultural institutions recover as best they could from that disaster. They realised that there were a lot of good intentions and well-meaning people that came from a different background and had different training, and therefore it didn’t work as efficiently, as smoothly or as safely as it could have. Also people, including the participants, didn’t know how FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and other emergency management systems worked and how they fit into the bigger relief effort as of course people had little way of communicating with each other with the phone lines being down.

 

It really came of the feeling we can do better, so we created a grant proposal for the IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) a federal agency that would train 60 people (3 groups of 20) across the USA and it would combine conservators, curators, librarians, archivists - people who could bring a lot of different skills and knowledge depending on what kind of collection was at risk.  Everyone would go through the same training and learn about health and safety issues, how to work as a team and how to work with the response agencies. 63 people were trained in the first round and then another grant in 2011 expanded it to a group of 107. It wasn’t the number of people that needed to be increased but we needed people spread across the country so that we were within close vicinity of a disaster’s location, had someone who could drive and not need a flight or rental car. The main calls we were getting were from smaller historic museums that had a wide range of materials - decorative arts, wooden artefacts, architectural issues - and we needed more expertise in those areas. So when we selected people the second time round, it was 2/3 conservators and about 1/3 other professionals. We learnt from a situation in which we had a call from Minot, ND which is closer to Canada and people who responded were 10-12 hours away. 

What is the most recent event the team has to respond to?

Well, the short answer to that is Hurricane Sandy in New York which was huge effort and unusual for us in that it involved private artists and galleries as well as public institutions, our mission is to serve the public collections but it was clear that in New York we’d be losing an incredible amount of artwork and cultural artefacts if we didn’t include them.

We knew what the possible track of the hurricane was going to be and we were able to send out press releases and reach the regional art and history organisations saying “If you need us, here is how to contact us” and there is a 24 hour hotline people can call that the volunteers staff. I don’t think anyone knew how devastating this was going to be and even the museums there who had been affected by Hurricane Irene little over a year before didn’t know it would be significantly worse. The Noguchi Museum for example had gotten through Irene with no problem but the flooding from Sandy was so high water was coming in through exhaust vents and people had sand bags and raised things up on tables but a 3 foot storm surge comes through and knocks out the windows, lifts the tables, topples book cases and some of the basement storage areas not only flooded but the strength of the water was enough to smash doors in. It was hard for people to realise the power of moving water as opposed to dripping water.

The team is still indirectly responding to the disaster by taking calls and we had people on site for 3 weeks after the devastation then we set up a facility in Brooklyn, a cultural recovery centre that we ran for 3 months, where people could bring items that they had pulled out of the basements and the studios. We cleaned them, decontaminated them, mended them, did surface cleanings and stored them safely until a full treatment could be done. While Sandy was happening we had a fire in Massachusetts and a fire in Oklahoma that effected collections and we sent people out in January and February to help with those, typically one or two people for a few days.

What plan of action is put in place by the team when major disasters such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti strike?

The planning is very difficult as we have a very small budget for on-going maintenance of the team. We do have a coordinator, Beth Antoine, who is a conservator in New Orleans and she has a very small stipend to keep the teams together and to communicate with them to make sure people can get to small events whilst also manning the phone lines each month.

When we get to a big disaster like Haiti or Sandy and even Irene, we usually have to ramp up a bit and that means finding funding and if it is a domestic disaster that is effecting public institutions, typically there is some public money we can tap in to. After New York we basically started from nothing, we had already spent our year’s budget by the end of October and fortunately we were able to tap into some funds from Sotheby’s and other corporate funders and hire people on the ground in New York to coordinate volunteers. In New York we had 23 AIC-CERT members who volunteered but there were 80 other people, mostly conservators, who also volunteered and worked very hard.

In Haiti, another situation we weren’t prepared for, the need for help was so strong the Smithsonian was able to take a lead role in that response and they asked AIC-CERT to find volunteers to help with their efforts, mainly those who conserved artwork. We were led by Stephanie Hornbeck who was hired to direct the Smithsonian’s response. It started very rough – people were using pipes for hammers, credenzas for weights and you did whatever you could with what you had. Gradually we were able to get more supplies and equipment and establish a pretty good triage centre, not a full conservation laboratory, but at least something to provide people with the supplies they needed. It also involved a lot of training, mostly of Haitian artists who learned how to clean, care and mend the paintings.

Are there any particular artefacts of cultural significance or note that have been rescued by the team?

The really short answer is they are all significant – you go into a small museum in Iowa and it’s flooded, those collections may not have iconic status but for the community they are very important. These objects tell the story of their region. We work very closely with the owners of the collections to figure out what is critical and what can be replaced. In public libraries it is often cheaper to replace the fiction if the books are still on sale. Identifying what is important to tell their story is what our people are trained to do – a librarian can talk to a librarian, an archivist can talk to an archivist.

People are in shock as often what we go into is not just a burst pipe, but a flood that means their home and their spouse’s place of work is under water. In hurricanes you may not even know where all your
co-workers are as communication is very difficult. A workshop at this meeting [41st American Institute for Conservation Annual Meeting] was on psychological issues in disaster recovery and how you help people deal with the stress and make quick decisions.

In Haiti, some of the most significant collections were in private galleries and they don’t have the same public/private divisions. Iconic paintings were crushed under the rubble and had to be pulled back out. It was part of their heritage and what they needed as a country to survive. One of the surprising items rescued in a historical society in Iowa was a very large painting that had come off the wall and was down on the floor, we’d been walking on it so we then recovered it, restored it and returned it to the collection.

In New York we worked with at least 19 artists in the cultural recovery centre who brought their things in and explained what their needs were, sometimes it was just “I need space because I’ve filled every inch in my apartment and I can’t put them back in the basement as it’s not open to public access”. There was the Martha Graham company collection, props and costumes that date back forty years and are still being used, the Smithsonian was very interested in helping them as they knew these were iconic items that meant something to the country not just the dance company.

Why in times of crisis is it important to rescue our cultural heritage?
In Haiti, a lot of volunteers would go over on flights and there’d be doctors, nurses and engineers and the volunteers asked themselves ‘What am I doing, why am I taking up space?’. There are quotes from the Haitian communities saying they can build houses but heritage is what makes it worth all the effort and it makes their lives have meaning.
AIC-CERT isn’t going to be the first ones there, and we shouldn’t be, the health and safety of people and the structural integrity of buildings has to come first but there is a real need to help these communities to recover and continue. It is quality of life versus quantity of life - you could just tear everything down, put up pre-fab buildings and call it a city but that’s not how cities are formed. We are drawn to places, we are drawn to things, it is what gives us identity and I’m honoured to be working with people who have devoted their lives to the concept that “stuff matters”.

>> Read the blog 'Rescuing Haitian Paintings'

Archaeometry problem? NU-ACCESS is here to help

An introduction to the Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS) by Dr Francesca Casadio:



Professor Katherine T Faber of Northwestern University and
Dr Francesca Casadio of the Art Institute of Chicago are the co-directors of NU-ACCESS

"These days, scientific research has become an integral part of any serious plan of study of fine arts, archaeological findings or about any other tangible object that constitutes our shared cultural patrimony.

Many major Art Museums in the world have been equipped with state-of the art scientific instrumentation since the beginning of the 20th century (unless you are the Rathgen Research Laboratory of the Berlin State Museums, which led the pack being founded in 1888). Increasingly, portable instruments such as x-ray fluorescence spectrometers, Raman spectrometers, diffractometers and hyperspectral imaging devices are not only the tools of space exploration, but are brought to museum collections and sites for materials-based archaeology (or archaeometry).

So, what happens if you are one of those cultural institutions or archaeological sites, or historical buildings with a really compelling materials-question and you don’t have your own in-house scientist, clad in a white lab-coat? In Europe, you call up Charisma, the Cultural Heritage Advanced Research Infrastructures: Synergy for a Multidisciplinary Approach to Conservation/ Restoration, and in no time a nimble van, jam-packed with the latest and greatest in portable equipment, will come at your doorsteps to solve the problem at hand (it is not quite like that, but close).

In the US, until recently your only option was to rely on the kindness of a scientist at a cultural institution, or a chemistry professor in academia, a physicist at a large scale facility or, if you had a budget, one of a handful of conservation scientists in private practice. Since January 2013 though, you can call up a scientist at NU-ACCESS, and it’s their job to listen and steer you towards a successful project proposal, that, if approved, will be carried out competently at no cost to your institution.

The Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS) is a collaborative endeavour in conservation science that pursues
objects-based and objects-inspired scientific research to advance the role of science within art history, curatorial scholarship, archaeology, and conservation. The goals of the collaborative program are to enrich the breadth, scope, and reach of scientific studies in the arts and in the wider field of conservation in the United States and abroad, by leveraging resources at the Art Institute and materials-related departments at Northwestern University.

The conservation science partnership, funded over six years with a generous gift of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will offer its scientific tools and expertise to users, facilitating interdisciplinary research partnerships in art studies and conservation on a national scale. Academic researchers and scholars in training will meet and engage in mutual learning with scientists, conservators and curators.

This landmark initiative represents a tectonic shift from the isolated museum scientist to a collaborative hub that will serve as incubator of new ideas.

While the scientists won’t come to you with a private jet full of scientific equipment (after all, this is America, and the Charisma van would not be practical to cross its vast expanse), curators, conservators, archaeologists, librarians and others interested in investigating the materials aspect of our shared cultural heritage, develop innovative techniques to conduct such investigations and preserve artifacts, sites, buildings and documents for future generations should consult the center’s website to check on current activities and to submit a research proposal."