A Day in the Archaeology Lab

I’m on hiatus this week. It’s the week I give my first exam of the Fall 2023 semester at UMBC and I have a pile of homework to grade. Sorry about this, but I don’t have time this week to create a full post. Instead, I’ve pulled together some photos from our activites in the lab this past Monday. Some of the CCASM crew were out in the yard washing artifacts. We didn’t have sunshine, but at least it had finally stopped raining and the temperature was perfect to be out and about. Tropical Storm Ophelia did make a mess…I didn’t go down to the site to view the units – I figured they were full of water, again.

Left Elsie (in blue) and Carol (in pink). Right Peggy (in front) and Linda
enjoying a day in the yard washing artifacts.

Mary and Linda getting us organized

There are boxes and boxes of artifacts from this season’s excavation at Swann House that will be cataloged this winter. This past Monday we sorted through everything and made sure that all the bags were checked into the lab. I started going over the unit notes to determine what drawings we have left to do, and to ask a few questions – are the notes complete? Am I missing soil descriptions, final depths? How many features are left to excavate? How much more field time do I have left this fall before we backfill the units? So much to do and we’ve already started out at Maxwell Hall on the second half of our survey in the state park. By the way, that counter was immaculate when everyone got finished. 

Sometimes the bags can be less than fun
 to wash especially if it's all oyster shell.
But in this one we found...

I did get to go outside and wash one bag of oyster shells from our work at Maxwell Hall State Park two weeks ago. This bag was from our shovel test pit (STP) excavation at site 18CH101. We’re tracing the limits of a shell midden (we still have more STPs to dig) and the first bags came into the lab for processing. As you can see in the screen we recovered tons-o-oyster shells. But in this particular STP we also found a sherd of Native American pottery.

A sherd of pottery

 

The sherd is possibly Late Woodland. It has a net marked exterior. When the site was located in the 1950s by Richard Stearns, he reported finding a stemmed point, which could be any number of point types. There’s a Late Archaic Period/Early Woodland site (18CH995) where a Piscataway Projectile Point was found just a few 100 feet away from 18CH101. It’s possible that the two sites represent a long term occupation of the landscape from at least 900 B.C.

Elsie and Susanne during our last public weekend at the Swann Site
16 September 2023.

We’re out of the field until October 16^th, but there’s a ton of lab work to do! Stop by on Monday the 2^nd of October to volunteer, and drop me an email to let me know if you’re coming: eread@umbc.edu

And don’t forget the Tales and Ales event at Port Tobacco Village on Saturday evening September 30^th! Linda will have an excavation unit for the kids out in front of the court house. There will be a food truck. And - for you really big kids - ale from Mully’s.