Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
One of the most exciting things about archaeology is that you never know what you’ll find until you start digging, and sometimes you don’t know what you find when you find it, and that is exactly the case with this discovery. While digging the shovel test …
Hello, my name is Josie Cowles and I am a junior here at MSU currently working with the MSU Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) to excavate the old MSU observatory. The foundation was found by the CAP crew in May of 2023, and has been the …
The importance of archaeological excavations revolve around the drive to uncover forgotten, and missing pieces of history; my time with Michigan State’s Campus Archaeology Program aided in doing just that. I worked alongside Dr. Stacey Camp and 12 other CAP crew members to dig up the remains of MSU’s original observatory that was built in the 1800s. Walking into this field study I had an insignificant amount of knowledge on how a field study runs. However, as the field study comes to an end, I’m able to speak about and explain thoroughly the steps I took to perform patient surveys, shovel tests, dig excavation units, sift soil, and how to bag, clean, and catalog artifacts. The bit of information I find most important and will be expanding on is the importance of recording the details of an excavation from start to finish.
Taking field notes is a way to record the work you’re doing in order to avoid forgetting details, as well as being able to revisit the information in the future. Field notes should be written in a fashion that is detailed enough so that if someone was not working on the excavation site, they would be able to accurately imagine or recreate the site. The process of writing down notes can be drudgery, because the real fun part is digging and uncovering history! However, without any documentation of the process, the information can be lost once again. The act of digging up a site is essentially destroying any provenience and therefore eliminating the option of replicating information collected during an excavation. This means that taking careful notes makes it possible for people to refer back to the steps taken, choices made, and history discovered.
Information worth noting in field notebooks include: observations, soil changes, artifacts found, depth, dimensions, stratum levels, and drawings. A few examples of how I would typically organize daily information in my notebook can be seen below:
It’s extremely vital to write down the date and time when recording field notes. This makes it easier to share and compare notes with other crew members, as well as being able to efficiently refer back to these notebooks in the future.
Some notes require more detail than others. For example, the process of laying out a grid requires you to record many intricate details, in comparison to recording the soil type you came across while shovel testing, which can be conveyed with a bullet point.
Field notes should be legible for the very reason that other people will be referring back to it. Having a messy and unorganized notebook can prevent the information you recorded from being shared with the public accurately.
All in all, the multitudes of newfound knowledge is far more important than how many buckets of dirt were dug from the ground. The hand-written notes we recorded, from the start of the field study, to the end, is what will aid in giving MSU’s observatory and its artifacts credibility. I’m so grateful to have been part of this incredible opportunity and for the widened skill set I will take with me.
This past summer has been one of the busiest, if not the busiest, summers of my time as director of the MSU Campus Archaeology Program. While we did not have a field school as we generally run them every other year, a remarkable discovery was …
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 …
This last summer, I had the amazing opportunity to be a part of CAP Crew, the group of MSU Archaeology (or archaeology-curious) students that conduct the compliance archaeology during the summer. Although, there is significantly more paperwork and lab work than there is fieldwork – alas, such is the life of an archaeologist. So, by the time we began work on the “Spartan Solar” project, we were all itching to get our trowels dirty.
The “Spartan Solar” construction project is planned by MSU Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, and encompasses ~100 square acres of pastures between Jolly and Bennett off of Hagadorn. CAP researched the historical background of the area and identified several areas of high historic sensitivity. This brought those of us that were working on CAP crew away from non-air-conditioned classrooms and endless artifact forms (thank goodness) and finally out “into the field”.
When we got out there, we spent a few days walking and driving around each pasture to identify which area we would conduct our survey that season. Next, we established a survey grid in the pasture between Beaumont Road and Cattle Drive. Shovel test pits (STP) were placed at 15m intervals and when we found a significant level of materials in an STP, we dug radials at 7.5m intervals in cardinal directions from the positive STP. We excavated 61 shovel tests from June 22 to July 12, 2022. As someone who had dug very few STPs before the summer ’22 season, there was a decent learning curve when it came to digging efficiently.
Digging somewhere that is actively being used to raise animals is always super fun – you get to have many cute and fuzzy coworkers. Perhaps the highlight of the season was watching the farmers move a herd of cattle from one pasture to another, right through where we normally parked our cars!
As is typical in archaeological field work, one of our STPs was interesting enough to warrant us opening a full unit on the second to last day of the season. It seems that all the “cool” stuff hides until we are nearly out of time, which is frustrating and leaves you wanting a longer season! We spent the last day and a half excavating unit 1, taking turns practicing our shovel skimming in the different quadrants. Eventually, the amount and size of artifacts became too dense, and our trowels came out (finally). Even though hearing the word “archaeology” tends to make people think of Indiana Jones, we are certainly no treasure hunters. That said, it is always rewarding to find more than dirt and rocks!
This past summer, the Campus Archaeology program had the opportunity to offer a field school to archaeology students from MSU and across the state—our first field school since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Directly taking part in ongoing CAP research into life in the …
During archaeological excavations, some of the most ubiquitous artifacts unearthed are ceramic sherds that were once part of bowls, plates, vases, or other decorative pieces. It is relatively easy to appreciate the skills and techniques that go into the creation of meticulously crafted ceramic vessels. …
Here at Campus Archaeology, we love outreach – just this past week, we presented at both Michigan Archaeology Day and at our annual Apparitions and Archaeology Tour! (Thank you to those who stopped by!) We love outreach so much because we are passionate about archaeology and MSU’s history that we can’t help but find ways to connect with our local community here so we can all understand and learn about our history together.
However, over the past year and a half, we’ve had to adjust our events – some were cancelled while others were transitioned to an online setting. In fact, we have only started back in person this semester and still have certain protocols in place to protect us and those that come to our events. And this has been a different experience for us, as we usually love the opportunity to answer questions and listen to stories from our participants. But during this process, we learned a lot more about tools available for online learning and how we can engage with all of you in a new way!
I (Rhian) got to work with our Campus Archaeologist, Jeff Burnett, last year to create the Virtual Haunted Tour twine. I had never encountered Twine before, but loved how we could create an interactive exhibit that provides more information than we are able to do in person! Plus, we could incorporate more primary sources of photos and information available through the university archives! I personally learned a lot making the Twine and I’m hopeful that others felt the same way when reading it.
Based on this experience, I started to think about how we could use digital outreach again this year as an educational tool for those who are interested in learning more about the process of archaeology. I am in the forensic anthropology program here at MSU and while I knew the methodology for forensic archaeology, I joined CAP specifically to get more experience with traditional archaeological methods – both in the field and in the lab. Now that I’m getting more familiar with the nuances of archaeology, I wanted to create a tool to help others out there like me, who also want to learn about archaeology!
So I am teaming up with another CAP Fellow, Aubree Marshall, to create a new Twine tool for learning archaeology! We will be creating two different Twines:
The first Twine will guide our users through one of our more famous excavations: Saints’ Rest! While many of you may be familiar with this site, as we found many exciting artifacts at this site, we will walk you through each step of the process over the years and why we used certain methods, tools, or protocols. We hope this can help everyone understand why we process sites in a formalized way – and how that helps us to preserve the context and association of the artifacts we find and understand their historical significance!
The second Twine will be a choose-your-own-adventure format! Based on an excavation we did this summer at Spartan Village, we will provide a practice scenario for all of you: at each step of the process, we will provide you with the information we are typically given regarding a site (e.g., MSU’s construction crews were digging and hit a bunch of artifacts!) and you will be able to choose what you should do in response (e.g., go out now, wait one hour, start in the morning, etc.). In this way, you will understand how we make choices as how to excavate a site without delaying construction while still doing our best to preserve the history of our campus.
Twine is often used for interactive fantasy/role player games online where players can choose their own character and then decide what path they choose in a hope to win the game! Because of its success in that format, we believe this choose-your-own-archaeology-adventure will be a great learning tool as anyone who goes through our Twine will learn via experience!
We will be working on writing the script for the Twines this semester and will begin piecing together the html code next semester – hopefully these will be available for next summer and we can’t wait to make them available for all of you!!
Greetings! For those of you just joining our blog for the first time, I am Dr. Camp, the Director of the MSU Campus Archaeology Program (CAP). I am entering my 5th year here at MSU, and my 13th teaching as a tenure track faculty member …
