Lion of Baltimore

The Capital published an article today outlining a new project for the Maritime and Archaeological Historical Society. They are launching, with the assistance of a grant from the Maryland Historical Trust, a land and water survey of Bodkin Creek in an effort to find the remains of the Lion of Baltimore and a now-vanished lighthouse at Bodkin Point.



The Lion of Baltimore was one of the famous Baltimore Clipper ships known for their speed and agility, even in shallow waters. The ship was lost in 1814 at the Battle of Bodkin Creek when it was burned by the British during the War of 1812. If the search is successful, it would be one of the first times a clipper ship has been found.

Divers will be searching this location as well as the rest of Bodkin Creek and parts of the Chesapeake Bay over the next week and a half. If anyone has any suggestions for where in the Bodkin divers should look, contact Brian Jordan, assistant underwater archaeologist for the Maryland Historical Trust at 410.514.7668.

One of the intriguing parts of the article talks about a man reporting to have seen a schooner ship off his property two years ago after a storm. The comment couldn't stop my mind from wandering to the idea of a Loch Ness Monster in the area.


Click here to read today's article.



Click here for 2003 article published in the LA Times on the search for the Lion of Baltimore.



Click here for a 2007 article published in the Maryland Gazette on the history of the Lion of Baltimore.

Thomas Jefferson's Toothbrush!

While doing some reading for this week's Featured Artifact I came across another really interesting artifact:

This bone toothbrush handle was found in 1988 during excavations at Colonial Williamsburg. The handle is engraved with the name “Thos. Jefferson.” Thomas Jefferson did live at Williamsburg when he served as the second Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia beginning in 1779. Jefferson left Williamsburg in 1780 when the capitol was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond. The toothbrush handle was found in a trash deposit near the Governor's Palace. According to the context of the find, archaeologists know that the toothbrush handle was discarded in the late 18th century and therefore almost certainly belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States.

It is extremely rare to recover an artifact that can be connected to a specific person. While this is an exciting find it doesn't really tell archaeologists anything they didn't already know. Historical Archaeoloy is actually more useful for accessing the cultural remains of those who we don't already know much about because they were left out of written history, typically the lower class, women and minorities.

For more information on Thomas Jefferson's toothbrush and other archaeological finds at Williamsburg visit their website:

http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/may03/iotm.cfm

You never know what you are going to get...

The Washington Post published a fascinating article today on an archaeological dig in the Sahara Desert which has the remains of two different groups of people over a 5,000 year period. The article details how the site was found in 2000 when University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno was searching for dinosaur bones in Niger and came across this site. He returned three years later with researchers from several different countries to dig at the site.


The article is fascinating in that it is proof that you never know that you will find when you are digging.





Archaeologist Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy brushes sand from a skeleton at Gobero. Garcea, who has spent nearly three decades excavating Stone Ages sites in northern Africa, used pot sherds and other artifacts to help identify Kiffian and Tenerian cultures at Gobero. Photo © Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration.
http://www.projectexploration.org



Click here to see the article from the Washington Post.


Click here to link to Project Exploration's website for more information, videos, and images.

More than just digging...

Today I thought I would address a frequently asked question. What happens to the artifacts archaeologists find once the excavations have ended?

Archaeologists actually spend a majority of their time in the Laboratory processing and analyzing artifacts. Archaeology in Annapolis has completed the Fleet-Cornhill Mitigation project and the summer Field School and now we have artifacts recovered from almost 14 weeks of excavation to process. The estimation is that for every week spent in the field excavating archaeologists
spend a month in the lab processing the artifacts.

The first step in processing collections involves washing all the artifacts. There are specific standards for washing artifacts which vary according to the material and the condition of the artifact. This is also the point where archaeologists identify artifacts that require special conservation attention and then create a plan of action to address these needs.

Next we must catalog the collection which is a way of recording a description of each artifact along with all other artifacts found within the same provenience. Provenience is the single most important word within the discipline of archaeology. Provenience refers to the three-dimensional context or location of an archaeological find which allows us to date our discoveries and is essential to the interpretation of a site. Next we carefully label each artifact with provenience information. Ideally we try to label the object itself so that the information cannot be separated from the object. Artifacts are stored permanently in temperature and humidity controlled facilities to reduce the rate of deterioration. The idea is to preserve and store these artifacts indefinitely for future research.

The next stage is the interpretation. For each site excavated, archaeologists must produce a site report which interprets and explains the archaeological finds. Site reports vary according to location and time period of the site but most historical archaeology site reports contain similar elements. Before excavation begins archaeologists perform documentary research in order to understand the site they are digging. This background information is included in the report. Each unit, which refers to the individual holes dug on the site, has a section in the site report. Each of these sections generally includes a brief level-by-level description of how the unit was excavated and then gives greater detail on significant finds including drawings and/or photographs. Cultural Resource Management site reports also include a section for "recommendations" where the the archaeologists make suggestions as to the future care and preservation of the historical site.

Many archaeologists try to publish their findings in a professional journal or if possible a more main-stream publication in order to reach a larger audience. Archaeology in Annapolis certainly has plenty of work to do in the next few months- we'll keep you posted!

The Society for Historical Archaeology provides a great outline for how to properly process an archaeology collection. Here's the link: http://www.sha.org/research_resources/curation_standards.htm

Tenement Museum

I just got back from a trip to New York City and while we were there I visited a really great house museum called the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The building was erected in the 1860s and was home to an estimated 7,000 people between then and the 1930s. At any one time this single address housed around 20 families.

I went on the "Getting by Tour" which took us to the apartments of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family who lived at the address in the 1870s and the Sicilian-Catholic Baldizzi family who were there in the 1930s. Each of the apartments were around 300 square feet and had a small bedroom, a kitchen area and a small living room. Of course due to the size of the apartments all of the these rooms doubled as living, dining and work spaces. There were outhouses in the back yard for the 20 families until the early 1900s when they received indoor pluming. After that each floor had two bathrooms to share between the 4 apartments on each floor. In the early 20th century they ran electricity to the tenement building.

Much of the information known about the Gumpertz family was taken from historical documentation. They showed us pictures of the family members as well as census records and citizenship papers and used these documents to tell the story. As for the second apartment (pictured here), the museum was able to contact a member of the Baldizzi family that lived in the tenement as a young girl. They have around 15 hours of oral history interviews with her and she played a major part in helping reconstruct the apartment as she remembered it for the museum. They played a few minutes of the oral history recording for us where she describes her mother and some of her daily activities.

At the end of the tour they took us into what they call the "Ruin Room" which is an apartment left exactly as the museum found it in 1988. The guide wrapped up the tour by talking about current immigration in the city. I asked if there had been any archaeology done at the museum. The guide said that archaeologists had excavated the backyard and had found the privy and they are currently excavating the cellar area. As you can imagine they found a tremendous amount of domestic material but beyond that the guide couldn't give me too many details.

For me this museum was so interesting because it wasn't about one time period or one group of people. It was about the urban immigration experience as a whole. It managed to tie so many different types of people together but also kept it personal and relevant to the present. If you're in NYC I recommend a visit. Don't forget to ask about the archaeology!

For more information on the museum check out their website: http://www.tenement.org/index.htm