2016 Public Archaeology Lab Days (July - Dec )

CCASM is continuing to work with Charles County at the Monday Public Archaeology Lab Days on various Charles County collections and exhibit initiatives.  The lab is located in Historic Port Tobacco.  Esther Read is the archaeologist in charge.

Here is what we did during the second half of 2016.

            

December 12 was the last day for the Open Lab for the year 2016.  Esther, Elsie, and Carol discussed what we needed for the Excel spreadsheet to be used to catalog the collections when we return in January.  The photo shows Esther cleaning some of the glue residue from a porcelain bowl mended in the 1960's.  Something else that needs to be done.

Monday December 5 Carol, Esther, and Cathy with help from Mike and Elsie set up an area on the second floor of the Port Tobacco Courthouse to be used for cataloging the collection.  Next they photographed artifacts from the 1969 Port Tobacco excavations to be used for a new Stagg Hall display.  These photos included Dutch tin-glazed ceramics, Chinese porcelain, German blue and gray stoneware, British white salt-glazed stoneware and pipe bowls.  The artifacts chosen for the day are two sherds of Chinese porcelain - one Imari sherd (early-mid 18th century) and one Famille Verte sherd (ca. 1680-1725)

Setting up new shelf unit

Photographing
white salt-glazed
stoneware

Chinese Imari and
Famille Rose porcelain

November 28 Julie and Esther finished sorting the Stagg Hall artifacts while Elsie and Carol completed the decoration of the inside of Burch House for the Holiday Trail.  Next week we will be moving to the Courthouse since in the winter cold air seeps up through the Burch House floors in the lab area.
Julie selected the artifact of the day.  It appears to be a really worn George III farthing and was found in our latest excavations in front of Stagg Hall.  Here is a photo of what we recovered next to a better example from the aboutfarthings.co.uk website.

Not as exciting as the above but here is a photo of a large number of printers type that was found together in front of Stagg Hall.  Earlier in November there was a photo showing type with two side notches where one of the type pieces had the notches closer together.  This photo also shows this but includes some additional type with three side notches.  

CCASM will be hosting Burch House for the upcoming Charles County Holiday Trail.  So on November 21 Jean-Marie, Elsie, Peggy, Kirstin, and Carol took a break from washing and sorting to start decorating Burch House.  The photo shows some of the ornaments Elsie brought to put on one of the trees.  In the afternoon we made paper ornaments for the other tree.  We're not finished, but we made a good start.  (It's a little early for Christmas, but the decorations have to be in place by December 1.)

On November 14 Jean-Marie, Elsie, Julie, Peggy, Carol, and Esther finished washing the artifacts that had been recovered at the November 5 Public Archaeology Day at Stagg Hall.  There were a number of interesting artifacts including some shown in previous posts.  Since we are starting to learn more about bones, we decided for these jaws to be the photo for the day.  We probably shouldn't call them artifacts since they were probably not from the remains of a meal.  (They are really small.)  We ended the day sorting nails from the Courthouse attic.

 On November 7 Jean-Marie, Julie, Kirstin, Carol, and Esther had to sort the dried 1970 artifacts to free up the drying screens. Then we started washing the artifacts that had been recovered at the November 5 Public Archaeology Day at Stagg Hall - starting with two of the four Level 3 bags.  The artifact of the day is a decorated pipe stem than may have the letter R on it.  On Saturday we had found a Peter Dorni pipe stem fragment, and we thought this might be part of that pipe or another Peter Dorni pipe (see Public Archaeology at Stagg Hall-2016 ).  If you compare the photos, you will see they are not from the same pipe.  So is this another Peter Dorni pipe stem fragment?

An interesting observation was made when looking at the printer types washed today.  Each printer type has two notches on the side for putting into the tray.  And for all the printer types but one the notches line up.  For the fourth printer type in the photo the notches are closer together.  So it wouldn't fit in the same tray as the others.

On Halloween, Jeanne Marie, Elsie, Julie, Kirsten, Carol, and Esther returned to the lab.  We continued to sort, bag, as well as wash artifacts excavated around 1970. We came up with two artifacts for the day.  Jeanne Marie is holding a glass button that we had originally selected as the artifact for the day.  Then at the end of the day we found this porcelain doll foot that Kirsten is holding.  So we decided to have two artifacts for the day.  And interestingly, Julie washed some white salt-glazed stoneware fragments that were excavated on Halloween 1970.

October 24 Elsie, Peggy, Carol, Scott, and Esther took a day off from the lab.  They were joined at Rich Hill by Cathy, Mike M, Mary Pat, Carol D, Joe, Debra, and Mike S (Friends of Rich Hill) to walk the woods around Rich Hill looking for depressions or other evidence of an early graveyard.  (Rich Hill is an 18th century home in Charles County, Maryland with a historic connection to the deaths of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.)  We didn't find a graveyard, but we did find a deep hole that is probably the remains of an outbuilding cellar.  By the way, that is Esther and Mike M in the bottom of the hole.  It turned out to be a nice, crisp day -- great day to be outside. 

Kirsten joined Jeanne Marie, Elsie, Peggy, Carol, and Esther on October 17.  Activities included sorting and bagging as well as washing additional artifacts.  Peggy is holding the artifact for the day - a small tin-glazed pot.  But we decided to also show a partial wine glass and a glass stopper.  It's not often that so much a wine glass survives in the ground.  During lunch we took a break to visit Stagg Hall and look at the new panels/banners that the Charles County Historical Society have installed there.

October 3 Jeanne Marie returned to join Peggy and Carol at the Open Lab.  Carol worked on the ceramics shown in the photo on the right.  There were examples of a lot of different types of earthenware, porcelain, and stoneware.  Jeanne Marie and Peggy finished the "glass bag" and started on a shoe box of nails.  The shoe box also had a number of metal objects including the usual object in the photo on the right.

September 26 Elsie, Julie, and Carol worked on re-bagging the artifacts from the "Court House Glass" bag (not all of it was glass) while Peggy re-bagged some larger ceramics pieces. Elsie chose the artifacts for the day.  The photo on the right shows the variety of the glass being re-bagged.  The photo on the left might be a child's glass although one person thought it might be a "pony" glass that was used to measure liquor.

Despite the rain on September 19, Julie, Peggy, Carol, and Esther showed up at Burch House to work on the artifacts recently brought over from the Courthouse attic.  Carol chose the artifacts for the day.  The photo show a lot of different metal objects - everything from a bone handled knife to a fish hook.  There is also a nice piece of gun flint.   But most of the day was spent trying to preserve the provenience of glass fragments stored in badly deteriorating plastic bags.  People had taken the time to wash and label the artifacts but they used really thin plastic bags.  The larger brown bag container indicated the glass came from the Courthouse Site, and the labels on the interior bags and artifacts were 'PT' followed by a number.  Probably over 90% of the previously labeled artifacts were from Area B, Feature 1.  The puzzle continues.

September 12 was more of a housekeeping day.  Elsie, Carol, and Esther finished rebagging any artifacts remaining at Burch House and put all the artifacts that had been processed in the past several months into Esther's SUV for transport to the Courthouse.  Then the three brought down more artifacts from the attic and brought them back to Burch House.  So now we have four more boxes of artifacts to wash and rebag. 

Julie, Peggy, Elsie, and Carol returned to Burch House on August 29 to continue washing and sorting the artifacts that had been stored in the Courthouse attic.  The artifacts were from Area B, Feature 1, and the bags also indicated the square and level where the artifacts had been recovered.   Nice to have the provenience on the bags even if we aren't sure yet where this maps on the ground. 

Julie provided the photos for the artifacts this week.  On the top is an example of one of the 1720-1820 pipe bowls we have been finding along with a few pipe sgtems.  On the bottom are four decorative copper alloy button covers (not something we have been finding). 

Esther continued working on the Rich Hill report.  Also Phil, Mike, Drew, and Cathy stopped by.  This led to genealogical and historical discussions about Rich Hill, the Dr. Mudd House, and Stagg Hall.

Instead of working on the historic artifacts at the August 22 Lab Peggy, Angela, and Carol moved to the Courthouse to work on Native American artifacts that had been found in the Courthouse.  A number of reference books as well as previous knowledge was used to help identify some of the projectile points.  This allowed Esther time to work on the Rich Hill report.

August 15 Elsie, Julie, Angela, Carol, Elise, and Esther found eight unbroken tobacco pipe bowl/stem fragments.  The pipe bowl shape indicates they were manufactured in Bristol England from 1720 to 1820.  Could they be from a tavern or maybe from a store?  In addition to nails and bone fragments, there was an interesting copper button and a faceted black glass button.

But the artifact picture for this week shows Angela holding an unbroken air twist stem from an eighteenth century wine glass.    

August 8 Scott joined Elsie, Julie, and Carol in rehousing artifacts from the Courthouse attic, and Scott was the one that associated the description on a bag with the labels occurring on many of the artifacts.  Based on the bag, it appears the label BF-1-2-4 refers to Area B, Feature 1, Square 2, Level 4.  And Cathy stopped by with a map that may indicated where on the ground Area B was.

Julie found this unusual metal (copper alloy) artifact with an intricate design engraved on it.  The image shows the front and back.  We aren't sure what it is.   Any suggestions? 
 

August 1 Jeanne Marie returned from all her travels to join Carol, Julie, and Esther in rehousing artifacts that had been found in Cabinet 8 in the Courthouse attic.  Angela stopped by to start washing some of the artifacts that had been found found in the east west trench that had been bug opposite Jim Barbour's door (think Quentzel store).  Again we chose to highlight two artifacts.


Julie liked the bird on this piece of blue transfer printed earthenware.

And Angela washed a "WEAREVER" pen or pencil clip.  The Wearever trademark for fountain pens and pencils dates to 1935.  You should be able to see the letters in the image.

Thank goodness for air conditioning.  On July 25 Elsie, Carol, and Esther retrieved some more of the  artifacts from the attic of the Port Tobacco Courthouse.  Peggy and Julie joined them in washing and sorting the artifacts.  We choose two "artifacts" to highlight.

The top photo shows an example of underglaze painted polychrome earthenware that was produced around the turn of the eighteenth century (1795-1815).  This earthenware is identified by the distinctive colors that were created from pigments of metal oxides (copper oxide- green; antimony oxide- yellow; iron oxide- red, yellow, brown; and manganese oxide- purple, brown).

The lower photo shows examples of white salt-glazed stoneware that was manufactured between 1685-1785.  The molded rims were introduced in the second half of the eighteenth century.  The design on the left is called Diaper and that on the right is called Barley.  We've seen a lot of "white" white salt-glazed stoneware, but the fourth sherd is an example of Debased Scratch Blue white salt-glazed stoneware that dates 1760-1795.
 

July 18 Angela joined Julie, Peggy, and Carol to learn a little about identifying different types of ceramics.  We worked on the half-tray at the right that contained a variety of tin-glazed ceramics, stoneware, porcelain as well as painted and printed earthenware - mostly from the eighteenth century.  Julie's favorite piece was the larger piece of tin-glazed seen in the bottom center of the tray.  Peggy and Angela liked the porcelain (especially the painted ones), and Carol liked the knob in the top center of the tray.

Monday July 11 Angela, a Charles County summer intern, joined us and continued going through the boxes of artifacts recovered from Port Tobacco (2006-2011) while Esther worked on the artifact catalog for the associated projects.  In the background of the photo at the right Cathy and Elsie are putting together a halogen lamp that Elsie donated.  This should make the lab area much brighter.  And Carol and Elsie continued sorting and bagging the artifacts recovered from Stagg Hall.  The tray of artifacts for the day contained barbed wire, staples, lead, and stone roofing fragments - something different from what we have been processing.

2016 Public Archaeology Lab Days (Jan - June)
2015 Public Archaeology Lab Days