Rain, rain go away!

I feel like I’ve been doing underwater archaeology the last few days. There’s been more than eight inches of rain in the last week in Annapolis which has really affected the progress of the Fleet-Cornhill excavations. Because we are digging only a couple of hundred feet from the city dock the water table is already really high. In the unit where we found the wood planks we hit water around three feet down. We are only about one foot down and we’re already completely flooded. Here’s a picture of what the unit looks like each morning:

We use a hand pump and buckets to take out around 20 gallons of water at the start of each day. Then we have to continually pump water out of the unit throughout the day so we can see the soil as we dig. Working with saturated earth makes excavating really difficult because it's harder to identify changes in soil color and texture. Needless to say by the end of the day everyone is covered in mud!

When it's raining like this we can't excavate so we weren't able to make it out to the field every day this week. On our rain days we stayed in the lab to process artifacts and to look over our field notes. We also spent a day at the Maryland State Archives to do some historical research on the area where we're excavating. It's definitely not the romanticized version of archaeology you see in the movies!

Water, water everywhere

Given the large volume of rain Annapolis has received over the past week, I thought I would do a post on a museum featuring a type of archaeology I had never heard of until 3 years ago - underwater archaeology. After this week, I am sure that the AIA archaeologists working at Fleet and Cornhill Streets are beginning to feel as though they are underwater archaeologists.

I know that there are people who go out searching for ship wrecks, but I never made the connection between these searches and archaeology until one of my friends decided to pursue underwater archaeology professionally. Underwater archaeology as defined by the Museum of Underwater Archaeology (MUA) is "a way to study the past by examining a collection of artifacts that are found at the bottom of rivers, lakes, oceans, or other bodies of water. Although many of these sites are shipwrecks, they can also be airplanes, piers, or even sunken settlements."

The MUA is entirely online and looks at projects going on all over the world. This museum is devoted to bringing the field of underwater archaeology to the general public by allowing experts to present online exhibits and project journals discussing their research and findings. My underwater archaeology friend, Michelle Damian, is the Exhibits Editor there and has a fascinating set posts on work she performed involving Japanese Woodblock prints while working on her masters thesis in Japan.

If you are wondering how you can enter this field, I can share Michelle's story. Michelle's interest in Underwater Archaeology came after she earned her scuba diving certification. She combined her interests in diving, Japan, museums and historical things and determined she wanted to enter the field of Underwater Archaeology. She has since earned a masters degree in the field and is working on her doctorate.

I encourage you to explore the Museum of Underwater Archaeology's website. There are some fascinating projects to learn about.

Stay dry!