Questions, Questions, Questions

This week’s guest blog is courtesy of Deron Sharp, currently interning with the State Museum’s Section of Archaeology. A senior at Elizabethtown College, Deron is a dual history and anthropology/sociology major and is considering pursuing a career in the field of archaeology upon graduation.

During the first half of my semester long internship in the Archaeology Lab of the Pennsylvania State Museum, I have been blessed with a phenomenal group of mentors to learn from. This group of people, who’s careers are dedicated to the preservation of history and the study and practice of archaeology, have emphasized the importance of developing questions while researching and maintaining the Museum’s vast collection of over four million artifacts.

One of the major questions that continues to emerge numerous times throughout my experience here pertains to education. I learn more, not only about archaeology and museum collections, but about culture and history in my few months here, than I did in my early years as a middle school and high school student. Why is this? Also, what can be done to place these opportunities in the hands of younger students?

I do not have any answers to these questions. However, a run-threw of what an archaeology lab assistant or technician does may help others come to an answer. The first weeks of my internship here have been extremely educational and exciting! The project I embarked on was a Cultural Resource Management collection prepared by the Louis Berger Group, Inc. for the U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons. This collection was donated to the Museum by the U.S Department of Justice.

As a lab assistant, the project was to audit, accession, and shelve the collection. The artifacts were excavated from a phase one archaeological survey of a proposed U.S penitentiary site in Canaan Township, Wayne County. One of my favorite things about auditing collections is the vast amount of background research that is done on the area being excavated. The site report includes the landscape of the site, which in this case is labeled as open fields with streams to the south and east. Also included in the site report is the history of the land. The particular site had a railroad grade and farm complex, along with residential housing. None of these were present at the time of excavations, with only small remains of the railroad grade.

The audit can be a time consuming process, but also the most interesting and fun! Because every artifact needs to be accounted for, this process can take weeks. However, the artifacts themselves open windows to different cultures and time periods. It is fascinating to handle flakes thousands of years old, observe the many different types of historical nails, compare the different sizes of glass and determine their uses, or admire the pottery and wares of a time period! The lab assistants here have a remarkable eye for detail and because all of these items have to be counted and stored, an unbelievable level of organization. The accession process was as simple as handing the audited inventory to the Registrar’s Office. Also, shelving was not much different then the final scene of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc, with the exception of technologically advanced condensed storing units, controlled humidity and temperature, and a vast storage database.

Select artifacts from the William Munson House (36Wy136)

Each artifact raised numerous questions in my head, and I would love to thank the team for putting up with, and helping to answering them. Through this process, I was able to dig deep into an era of history, this so happened to be the late 1800’s to early 1900’s, and acquire an understanding for the way of life in which these people lived. I learned so much in such a short amount of time, that I began to wonder why I am only now being exposed to this type of learning. Answering the questions I mentioned earlier will take some time, if they can be answered. However, as a student in both the educational and museum worlds, I can see a huge benefit for students who spend time with the opportunities of learning a museum provides. I would suggest that some serious thought be given to help merge these two worlds in order to better educate tomorrow’s future.

*Thank you to the six individuals who make this blog possible; who alone manage, collect, and maintain the over four million and counting artifacts.

For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .

Wayne County Emergency Bridge Replacement Project

This week's guest blogger Lyn Nardello, a rising senior at Franklin & Marshall College. Lyn is an American Studies major with an interest in preservation planning. This summer she's interning with the Pennsylvania's Historical and Museum Commission in the Bureau for Historic Preservation to develop and approach to effectively link community-based preservation planning with transportation planning.

When severe flooding in the summer of 2006 washed out four bridges in Luzerne and Wayne counties, these bridges were given emergency priority for replacement. The APE, or area of potential effect, of one of the bridges—a concrete bridge that crosses over the West Branch of the Lackawaxen River in Wayne County—included a total area of .93 acres. Buildings in the area include a circa 1850 house, which lies just outside of the APE, a circa 1850 bank barn, circa 1920 abandoned poultry shed, and a circa 1950 barn. Historic properties such as this are oftentimes rich in cultural resources, and despite the fact that a relatively small part of the site lies within the APE and was determined not eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, extensive background research and site surveys were conducted on the property in accordance with federal and state laws intended to safeguard important cultural resources.

Background research revealed the long and interesting history of the house and farm on the Eldred Site. A deed shows the area was originally surveyed by a man named Thomas Craig around 1811, but the farm was established in the mid-19th century by Judge Nathaniel Baily Eldred. A native of New York State, Eldred made quite a life for himself in Pennsylvania where he was elected to State Legislature and served for four years between 1822 and 1827. He was subsequently appointed to several important positions: Commissioner of the Milford & Owego Turnpike; president judge of the Eighteenth Judicial District and later of the Sixth Judicial District; and naval officer in the Philadelphia Customs House. He served a term as Canal Commissioner and was a member of the Board of Commissioners overseeing navigation of the Delaware River. He declined a nomination to the Supreme Court in 1851. Additionally, a township in Jefferson County was named in his honor.

Upon retiring and settling fulltime at his dwelling in Bethany Borough, Eldred and his wife conveyed the Eldred Farm to a man named Justus Sears who then sold it to German immigrant George Fogel by 1860. Fogel ran the 130-acre general farm on the site for a short time before assigning the property to Joseph Gerher. Over the next several years the property was assigned to William W. Sherwood and then to Henry Greiner, a Civil War veteran who had lived the life of a farmer before enlisting in Company H of the Fifty-Second Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in 1861. He participated in 1862 battles at Lee’s Mills in April; Seven Pines and Fair Oaks in May, Bottom Ridge and White Oaks Swamp in June, and Carter’s Hill in July. After the war Greiner owned and operated the Eldred Farm with his wife and two daughters for seventeen years before conveying it to James P. O’Neill and his wife Mary, but these new owners maintained their residence in Mount Pleasant Township and conveyed the Eldred property to a Pennsylvania-born farmer named Phillip H. Kennedy, Sr. shortly thereafter. Kennedy died in 1918, and in 1920 his wife conveyed the property to Henry Mead who ran it as a dairy farm until his death in 1961. The Eldred property is now in the hands of Henry’s son, Clyde E. Mead and family.

The area investigated near the 1850 house yielded few artifacts documenting activities at this mid-19th-century property. Items recovered from the Eldred Site included vessel glass, cut and wire nails, milk glass lid liners, a horseshoe nail, lamp chimney glass, whiteware ceramics, a zinc jar lid fragment, and window glass. One historic site was recorded in the Pennsylvania Archaeology Site Survey files, 36Wy150, Eldred Site.

Archaeologists concluded that there was no sign that significant cultural resources would be affected by the construction of the new bridge and no further investigations were conducted. While this particular site did not yield significant historic artifacts, it serves as important evidence of Pennsylvania’s commitment to identifying and preserving its cultural resources. For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .

Carley Brook Bridge Replacement Project

Our blogger this week is Wes Stauffer an intern for the Cultural Resources Section of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Wes worked for a day in the Section of Archaeology observing our processes and auditing a Cultural Resource Management collection for compliance to our Curation Guidelines.

Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, federal projects require planning and cooperation, in addition to hard work. This proved true when the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation determined that the Bates Road/Weidner Road Bridge over Carley Brook, near Honesdale in Wayne County, needed to be replaced. Built in 1916, it had fallen into a state of disrepair over time. To insure that no important cultural sites were destroyed by the construction of a new bridge, a site survey preceded any site work.

Ideally, background research as well as on-site surveys will locate any important historic and archaeological sites in the area of probable effect (or the area to be impacted by the footprint of a new construction project). Such surveys prove especially important along waterways. Waterways provide food and transportation routes today just as they did for our predecessors. Relatively level, well-drained soils adjacent to water travel routes, as well as the fertile soil in adjoining floodplains, provided prime locations for Native American camps and settlements.

At the Carley Brook site, research and archaeological investigation uncovered a portion of the former Staengle property. Leonard Staengle built a house on the property around 1889, as well as a barn and a butcher shop. Staengle cleared the land and established a small farming operation to supplement his butchering business. Various occupants utilized the property through to present day.

Archaeologists excavated no prehistoric artifacts from the area of probable effect. Approximately 85% of the 302 historic artifacts unearthed reflect kitchen or architectural usage. Research determined that the artifacts reveal an occupation period between the 1890s-1920s, however they were uncovered in a mixed or disturbed context. Furthermore, no building foundations were located. Archaeologists concluded that a former refuse dump lies within the area to be impacted by the construction of a new bridge.

With their research completed and archaeological evidence analyzed, archaeologists felt confident that construction of the new bridge over Carley Brook could proceed without negatively impacting any important cultural resources. All artifacts, donated to the Bureau of the State Museum of Pennsylvania, have been inventoried and archived where future researchers can study them and other artifacts like them.

Cultural resources management, integral to projects such as the Bridge Replacement project over Carley Brook in Wayne County, preserves our heritage and gives residents of Pennsylvania a better understanding of our state’s past communities as well as those individuals who lived and worked within them.

For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .