So we’re all done with our fieldwork now, and we have bags upon bags of dirty pot shards, rusty nails, brick, and glass that all need to be cleaned before we catalog them and make any conclusions from our sites. And while working in the field is fun when you find new artifacts, cleaning them [...]
There seems to be a rule about archaeology, whether it is written or not, that once one begins to reach the end of their excavation, the most exciting artifacts begin to surface. The MSU Campus Archaeology Field School unfortunately only lasts five weeks, and it seems that it has been only within the last one [...]
In archaeology we find things that spark our imagination. You pick up an artifact and a million ideas rush through your head. Some are logical and some are just plain over the top. An archaeologist job is to balance these imaginative and logical ideas to draw a conclusion that works, and that’s what it’s all [...]
It all comes together… or does it? Hoping to find answers to questions we didn’t even know we were asking, us field school initiates searched tirelessly through maps, old diaries, news papers, official documents, and personal effects at the MSU archives. Knowing that we need to combine this knowledge with what we have seen in [...]
One of the most interesting things about archaeology is finding contradictions from the past. To quote Jeff’s post Why Archaeology? “By studying the physical objects left behind by our ancestors we fill gaps in our historical records, find the truth on personal accounts of history, and help connect in a deeper way to our heritage [...]
After downloading a program from a government website (harder than it sounds) and going through 438 different patents (twice), I return empty-handed. Two and a half weeks ago, I set out to discover the true heritage of the knob which reads June 11, 1889 and am no closer than when I started. When I found [...]
When it comes to archaeology one of the most exciting artifacts to find is one that can give your site a date. The most obvious of these artifacts being coins, or an object with a patent number. But there are plenty of other dating methods that don’t include the obvious finds. On the first day [...]
This post was co-authored by Lindsay Wancour and Evan Levine. When we first started this archaeological dig, we all were excited about every artifact we found, no matter how small. A piece of coal would keep us happy for an entire day, and discovering brick was like a dream come true. As the weeks progressed, [...]
We have had a lot of visitors at the site recently. So as you might imagine, we get a lot of questions. The most common ones are: “what are you doing?” and “what have you found”? When people ask the why questions that’s where things get tricky. We can answer the questions about why we’re [...]
Tour guide. I never thought that term would apply to me, but part of archaeological education is public engagement (hence this blog). Quite honestly, it’s one of the coolest parts. Since we began digging in the Sacred Space, tons of people have stopped by to check out our work. MSU President LouAnna K. Simon, administrators, [...]
