Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
By Aubree Marshall and Benjamin Akey Sometimes, when archaeologists are lucky, we run into botanical remains. In my personal research, I look at microbotanicals (like pollen, starches, and phytoliths) from dental calculus (the stuff your dental hygienist scrapes off of your teeth!) to understand diet. …
This academic year has allowed me to explore several digital methods I had little to no knowledge about. This is partially due to my teaching position at MSU in the Lab for the Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR). While in this position, I …
Construction along Service Road in 2020 found a mid-20th-century midden. The artifacts found were associated with the history of temporary post-World War II student housing on Michigan State’s campus. After the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, or the GI Bill, became law, college enrollment increased in the United States (Dressel 1987). This required more housing on campus, especially for married students, many of whom had families (Offices of Board of Trustees and President 1944).
During the summer of 2021, I worked on the Campus Archaeology summer crew. On rainy days, we worked in the lab, cleaning and cataloging materials from Service Road. While cataloging, we noticed a lot of underglaze, decal-decorated institutional-ware ceramics with similar patterns. By the end of the summer, we identified four distinct decorative patterns, which we named MSU Green Band, Esquire, Mobile, and Cross Stitch. These would have been used in dining halls, and their decorative styles allowed us to learn more about the places on campus where these ceramics would have been used. Additionally, we were able to find distinct dates for the ceramics based on the maker’s marks and date codes, when present. Date codes allow for a level of granularity in our analyses that is rare with other kinds of artifacts, providing a means to trace shifting patterns of institutional requisition.
The MSU Green Band design is named for the single green line just below the rim. Additionally, on some vessels the institution’s seal is located just below the green band. This pattern was used on dining hall dishes for much of the 20th century. Based on our preliminary analyses, it appears this design may have been gradually replaced by the Esquire pattern.
Two versions of the MSU Green Band design are pictured. As Michigan State shifted from College to University in 1955; the MSU Green Band design shifted as well, which can be seen reflected in the two distinct seals pictured in the examples provided above. MSU seems to have ordered this design from multiple companies, and the examples in the Service Road collection were produced by either the Shenango China Company or the Mayer China Company. MSU Green Brand was the most enduring ceramic style in the Service Road collection, with maker’s marks indicating a date range of 1950 to 1963. The MSU Green Band design is the most represented of the four ceramic types, comprising the majority of ceramics recovered from the site.
A second decorative pattern identified in the Service Road collection has been named ‘MSU Esquire’. The Esquire pattern takes its name from a similar Shenango China design called “Esquire.” Relative to the original Shenango design, the vessels recovered from the Service Road landfill had rectangular spiral designs rather than squares, and the laurels extend along longer stretches of the design (Replacements 2021). It seems likely that MSU commissioned a distinct version of the Esquire pattern for the university, though we have not been able to locate records to corroborate this. Our preliminary analyses suggest this design may have gradually replaced the MSU Green Band design.
The Mobile design consists of a fading grey band along the rim and a singular black and grey baby “mobile” motif that then extends from the rim to the larger undecorated portion of the vessel. The Shenango China Company created these ceramics, and the dates for this vessel range from 1951 to 1961. This pattern was created specifically for MSU’s new Kellogg Center for Continuing Education (Pratt 2003:116).
The last design found was Cross Stitch (Arthus 1955). The pattern consists of squares arranged in a floral motif, resembling traditional cross-stitching patterns. The stems and leaves are green, with blue and red alternating flowers; these designs run below the rim. The Cross Stitch design had Shenango and Mayer China maker’s marks. Compared to other designs discussed here, we recovered substantially fewer examples of the cross-stitch pattern. The few finely-dateable examples of this pattern in the Service Road collection were produced between 1958 and 1959, though we know from the archival photo below that use of this pattern at the university extends back to at least 1948.
This archival photograph of dining service at Landon Hall features this pattern, suggesting that it was used in women’s dining halls alongside other patterns like the MSU Green Band (also pictured). Given this photographic evidence and gendered imagery incorporated into the design, this pattern may have been exclusive to women’s dining halls (Michigan State University 1960; UAHC 2021).
The ceramics found in the Service Road midden were used in several distinct areas of campus, ranging from dining halls to the Kellogg Center. The abundance of complete and near-complete dishes in the Service Road collection allowed us to begin serializing ceramics used on campus in the mid-twentieth century. Being able to identify different ceramic designs utilized across MSU’s campus supports future CAP research efforts, as we now have a better sense of when and where on campus they were utilized.
References
Arthus, Gerard (1930) Mayer China: Illustrated Book of Decorations, No. 10. Mayer China Company, Beaver Falls, PA.
Dressel, Paul (1987). College to University: The Hannah Years at Michigan State, 1935-1969. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI.
Michigan State University (1960) “The Helot: Student Handbook”, Michigan State University Publications, East Lansing, Michigan. Available online, https://onthebanks.msu.edu/Object/162-565-2184/student-handbook-1960/, accessed December 23, 2021.
Offices of Board of Trustees and President (1944) Meeting Minutes, December 21, 1944. UA 1. University Archives and Historical Collections, East Lansing, Michigan.
Pratt, Michael E. 2003. Mid-Century Modern Dinnerware: A Pictorial Guide: Red Wing to Winfield. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Pub.
Replacements (2021) “Esquire”, Webpage, Replacements Ltd. https://www.replacements.com/china-shenango-esquire/c/117007, accessed November 4, 2021
University Archives and Historical Collections [UAHC] (2012) “Quonset Village”, blog, Archives @ MSU, July 9, 2012. https://msuarchives.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/quonset-village/, accessed December 29, 2021.
As we near the end of the semester, I want to reflect on one of my favorite experiences of fall 2022: the Midwest Historical Archaeology Conference! This year’s conference was organized by: Dr. Michael S. Nassaney, Professor Emeritus of Western Michigan University; our own Director …
While looking through the artifacts recovered from the 2020 Service Road project, the CAP crew found an interesting green glass bottle fragment. After further investigation, I found that this fragment was the remaining portion of a Sprite bottle made by the Chattanooga Glass Company (as …
The artifacts that we find in the archaeological record can tell us so much about the past – but what happens when the decorative elements of an artifact are worn away? Luckily, technology has provided with potential tools to help us identify faded applied color labels on glass artifacts and overglaze designs on ceramic artifacts!
Let’s start with some background information about the types of artifacts discussed in this blog post. Applied color labels, or ACLs, have existed since CE 221 in China. Through time, there was a transition from manually created screen prints to a machine that could apply silkscreens to curved surfaces by the early 1930s (Lockhart and Brown 2019). Decorative overglaze ceramics typically have decorative designs painted on top of the glazed-ceramic surface (Florida Museum n.d.). Because of the way that these decorations are applied to their respective artifacts, they can wear off with time.
Recently, we cataloged a green glass bottle from the Spartan Village project that had only shadows left from the original ACL. We were able to identify the writing on the bottle by rotating the bottle under strong light. We identified it as a “Better Air” air deodorizer, a product that would have been used to help obliterate “obnoxious odors” in the home. While we were able to eventually identify this artifact and the words that would have been a part of the ACL, it took a few hours to identify the directions and additional information on the sides of the bottle.
Inspired by a thread in a historical archaeology listserv (yes, listservs still exist!), we decided to use a long-wave ultraviolet (UV) flashlight to identify the writing quicker (Walter et al. 2021) . UV light is electromagnetic radiation that can help us detect any features not be seen with just visible light (Pinter 2017). Because it is relatively affordable (and CAP already has UV flashlights in the lab to help identify uranium glass from previous excavations), this method could provide CAP fellows with a quick and effective way to find out what ACLs would have said before they wore off.
We found that the ACL shadows were, in fact, readable under the long-wave UV light. The angle of the UV flashlight was easy to manipulate too, allowing us to read the phrases on each green-glass fragment relatively easily. This process was simple and quick, providing future CAP fellows a quick and effective way to conduct future cataloging and research of glass artifacts with only ACL shadows present.
Glass artifacts are not the only ones that lose their designs over time. Archaeologists face similar identification issues with the fading of decorative overglaze ceramics. So we decided to test the UV flashlight on a whiteware ceramic with decorated overglaze.
While the outline of the design was roughly visible with the UV flashlight, it still was not clear. So we decided to use iDStretch, an app designed for iPhones to help enhance rock art and faint pictographs. This method uses decorrelation stretch, enhancing images that are hard to see with the human eye (Harman n.d.).
After trying out a few different color combinations, we were able to identify the shape of the leaf design that had worn off with time. By using iDStretch, we can more easily identify any shadows present from previous decorative overglaze designs.
Technology allows archaeologists to quickly identify any missing decorative aspects of artifacts in a quick timeframe. This lets us better describe and identify the artifacts that we come across, especially here on MSU’s campus!
References
The Florida Museum
No date “WHITEWARE, OVERGLAZED- type index.” Article, floridamuseum.ufl.edu. Available online, https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/typeceramics/type/whiteware-overglazed/. Accessed November 2021.
Lockhart, Bill and Bob Brown
2019 “The Glamorous Applied Color Labels.” Article, sha.org. Available online, https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/ACLArticle2019.pdf. Accessed November 2021.
Harman, Jon
No date. “DStretch.” Article, dstretch.com. Available online, https://www.dstretch.com/. Accessed November 2021.
Walter, Susan, Denis Gojak, and Keith Doms (2021) “Fugitive Exposure” HistArch Listserv. November, 2021
Pinter, Matt
2017 “Applying ultraviolet lighting in machine vision applications.” Article, vision-systems.com. Available online, https://www.vision-systems.com/cameras-accessories/article/16737654/applying-ultraviolet-lighting-in-machine-vision-applications. Accessed November 2021.