Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
As the weather warms and summer gets closer, the Campus Archaeology Program is gearing up for yet another busy season. While our excavations occur primarily in the summer, months of planning and preparation take place before the first trowel is stuck in the dirt. Many …
For the most part, Unit C of our excavations has mostly produced nails, glass and ceramic shards, and a few fragments of small animal bones but last Friday (06/02) we uncovered an 1882 Indian Head penny. This type of penny has been popular among coin …
Announcing the 2017 Campus Archaeology Field School!
We are pleased to once again offer our on-campus field school. This five week field school will take place May 30th – June 30th, 2017. The class takes places Monday through Friday from 9am – 4pm. Students enroll for 6 credits of ANP 464. This class is open to MSU students and non-MSU students. There is a $150 equipment fee that is used to supply students with excavation tools. At the end of the field school students will keep this toolkit. Space is limited to 20 students, and applications are due to Dr. Goldstein (lynneg@msu.edu) by March 5th.
Through excavation, lab work, and digital outreach students will examines several unique and interesting places on MSU’s historic campus. In this course students will get the opportunity to actively engage in archaeological research. You will learn excavation methods, survey techniques, how to map and record an excavation unit, laboratory methods, cultural heritage and digital outreach engagement, as well as an introduction to archival research.
This summer we plan to excavate in two areas: Beal’s Botanial Lab and Station Terrace.
Beals Lab:
Dr. Beal is an important person in early campus history. Though Beal served as a botany professor at MSU (then MAC) from 1871-1910, he made mark on campus that survives to this day. The Beal botanical garden (directly east of the MSU main library), established in 1873 is the oldest continuously operated university botanical garden in the U.S. Beal also started, what is today, one of the longest continuously running experiments in the world! In 1879 Beal buried 20 bottles containing seeds with the intent to see how long a seed could lay dormant and still germinate. The next bottle is scheduled to be dug up and opened in 2020. The location of the experimental bottles is a closely held campus secret. Beal was known as an incredibly eccentric professor, and the design of his first botanical laboratory was fittingly eccentric as well.
Built in 1879 (more detail), this building burned to the ground on March 23rd 1890. Although specific details about the fire have been lost over time, we do know that lab equipment (such as microscopes) was salvaged from the wreckage and the fire prompted the university to establish a fire brigade. We’ve established that portions of the building foundation still exists, and field school students will have the opportunity to excavate in this location.
Station Terrace
Station Terrace stood at the souther end of what is now the Abbot street entrance. This building was constructed between 1892-1895 and originally housed visiting scholars from the experimental research stations. It was also later used to house bachelor faculty members, the East Lansing Post Office, and the Flower Pot Tea room (read more). The building was moved off campus in the early 20s but the foundation, as well as many artifacts remain. After excavations at Beal’s lab it’s expected that the field school will move to this second location.
For more information about the field school, head on over to the field school webpage.
Download the application. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have here, on Twitter, or email Dr. Goldstein directly.
References:
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2015/msu-gardens-ranked-among-best-in-the-us/
http://www.cpa.msu.edu/beal/research/research_frames.htm
http://onthebanks.msu.edu/Object/3-F-21F/meeting-minutes-1890/
Spring classes have ended, thousands of people have graduated, and a relative calm has spread over the campus. While many people kick back and relax over their summer vacation, this is the busy season for us here at CAP. During the summer we’re busy excavating, …
In continuation of my semester-long research project on Beaumont West, MSU’s sole prehistoric site excavated by CAP, I have entered the initial stages of report writing. This requires not only the results of the artifact analyses, but also the details of the site excavation so …
The summer field season has started out pretty busy this year. During our first day of monitoring the fourth phase of the North Campus Infrastructure Improvements, we received a call from Granger regarding some bricks that were found by the Museum. They were beginning to open up a large pit to remove and replace a steam tunnel junction underneath the Museum’s West Circle parking lot. The bricks were covered by a layer of concrete and remained insitu, mortar and all. Nearby this feature we found a large amount of concrete, brick, stone, and metal rubble. We did a quick rescue to record and learn what we could from the find as it had to be removed to progress the steam replacement.
I spent some time before construction began making some maps of the affected area using overlays with historic maps of the area and the locations of current buildings, sidewalks, and roads. Based on the maps I made, we are pretty sure the wall and rubble we found near the Museum was part of Williams Hall, which burned down in 1919.
Following the Williams Hall discovery, we continued to monitor by the Museum as well as the pulling up of the parking lot in front of and the sidewalks around Olds Hall. We also dug some test pits in the green space to the east of Olds Hall as well as underneath the parking lot located between Olds Hall and the Main Library. Neither of the surveys revealed anything of concern, although we began finding brick, cement, glass, nails, and other metal underneath the sidewalks around Olds Hall.
A couple of days following the Williams Hall discovery, a series of bricks that looked like a corner was found while we were digging shovel test pits underneath some of the sidewalks by Olds Hall. We opened the area up a bit and realized that the bricks were still arranged like a wall with an ash-heavy soil on one side that was full of nails, metal, and glass. There was also a large amount of loose bricks, mortared-stone, and cement around the wall. We dug down on the other side to find that after a few courses, the bricks stop at a layer of cement that continued into the bottom of our unit. We also chased the wall to either end until we found where the bricks stopped. After cleaning up and documenting, as well as consulting the maps I made, we believe it was a wall from the old engineering shops that burned down with the original engineering building.
We started the second week of the summer off right with some grilled cheeses from the MSU Dairy Store! We are currently working in the lab to finish up accessioning and cataloging artifacts from last summer and those we have from this summer so far. We are also continuing to monitor the steam tunnel construction and will keep you posted of any further developments!
Author: Josh Schnell
For those of us who have been involved in Campus Archaeology for a while, it is hard to believe that it has already been almost a decade since the first MSU excavation occurred. In honor of this, we are beginning the 2015 year by looking …
On November 24th, Turkey’s president Erdogan declared that women are not equal to men. However, the specific statement that rung across the archaeological community was “You cannot tell them [women] to go out and dig the soil. This is against their delicate nature”. Archaeologists, both …
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Greetings gentle readers. I have admittedly procrastinated the writing of this blog post. In my procrastination, I stumbled upon a buzzfeed.com post (link below) referencing a recent interview with actor Nick Offerman in which he was asked about his preplanned funeral arrangements. His brilliant response involved an elaborate, if inventive, recreation of a Viking burial ritual, flaming arrows, and Chris Pratt. Last year I read a book chapter that cited a detailed eyewitness description of a Viking funeral, but one which included neither fiery missiles nor a burning longboat welcoming the deceased to the Great Beyond (Parker Pearson 1999). I am a touch disappointed that history seems to lack this dramatic theatrics, but I digress. I was reminded of the never-ending discussion among archaeologists regarding the public’s perception of archaeology and the past. We are often mistaken for paleontologists or are asked even more frequently if we own a fedora and/or bullwhip.
The Campus Archaeology Program at MSU has consistently maintained a visible presence, whether by social media or fieldwork on campus. By frequently updating the website with our findings or participating in events such as the annual Michigan Archaeology Day, we not only inform the public about what it is that archaeologists do, but also generate interest in MSU’s rich history. I remember my excitement at learning about CAP when I first came to MSU. My undergraduate institution did not have a similar program, nor have I heard of other universities having archaeology programs that focus work specifically on university history. I have only conducted fieldwork with CAP a few times and was initially a bit surprised but always excited when passersby visited our work areas. Some would briefly stop and ask if we had found anything exciting before continuing their day, but many would stay for several minutes and ask questions about what we were looking for, why we were excavating in a given space, etc. A few even participated in screening soil for artifacts. It was always apparent that students and non-students alike take a special interest in Michigan State’s heritage and hold it as a source of university pride.
My primary project for CAP this year involves determining a suitable location to hold the 2015 Campus Archaeology field school. The project will involve a combination of archival research and shovel testing across campus. Current areas of interest include the botanical gardens, the Forestry Cabin once located at People’s Park, and an area of the River Trail near the administration building that yielded what appears to be a large trash pit comprised mostly of discarded lab equipment. In the weeks to come, you may see us around campus with our shovels and screens digging away. If you do, feel free to stop by with any questions or if time permits you could even help us uncover, preserve, and share our university’s heritage.
We hope to see you soon.
Author: Josh Burbank
Reference:
Parker Pearson, Mike. 1999. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Texas A&M University Press,
College Station.
Link to Buzzfeed article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/nick-offerman-has-already-planned-
his-funeral-and-it-sounds#1ei364n
*Disclaimer: The Offerman interview includes a single instance of profanity at the end.
I’ll admit it, this post is a little late in the making. I’ve been trying to play catch-up from the last couple of days of summer survey that left us with a ton of artifacts, and even more questions. I, and the CAP crew, spent …