A New Year and a New Exhibit – The 2020 PA State Farm Show

A new year has just arrived, and like every year we kick it off with our largest outreach event, the Pennsylvania State Farm Show. The largest indoor agricultural event in the United States this year is the 104^th PA Farm Show, and we are busy as usual in preparations. The Farm Show begins tomorrow Saturday, January 4^th and runs through Saturday, January 11^th. As in past years, The State Museum of Pennsylvania’s exhibit is in the main hall of the Farm Show Agricultural Complex, across from the carousel on the MacClay Street side of the building. This year the State Museum’s exhibit will receive an update, providing a broader view of what the museum has to offer.

In the past, the State Museum’s Farm Show exhibit highlighted different Pennsylvania archaeological topics, the replica dugout canoe and our exhibit panels along with artifacts from our collections. This year the exhibit will still contain archaeological information, but it will also include information highlighting information on other galleries within the State Museum. The archaeological portion of the exhibit will highlight Pre-Contact peoples of Pennsylvania through a representation of the artifacts found in the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at the museum. The replica dugout canoe at the Farm Show is based on one in our gallery which was recovered in Mud Pond, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The original canoe was radiocarbon dated to 1250 AD. 

An exciting addition to our exhibit this year is the last known Eastern Cougar shot in Pennsylvania which represents the State Museum’s Mammal Hall. The History gallery’s hands on, T.M. Fowler “Bird’s Eye View” maps exhibit will also be present. This popular exhibit was on display last year at the museum, so if you missed it there, here is your opportunity to be captivated by images of Pennsylvania cityscapes from over 100 years ago. The Fowler maps provide a historic perspective of Pennsylvania towns from the late 19^th and early 20^th century and are essentially the google earth view of that period.  State Museum staff and volunteers will be on hand to answer questions about the exhibit and about the State Museum. There will be plenty of informational brochures and magazines about Pennsylvania archaeology and the State Museum available to everyone, as well as a chance to win a behind the scenes tour, so stop by to enter for your chance to win!

2019 Farm Show Exhibit

As in the past, the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology (SPA) and the Pennsylvania Archaeological Council will be participating in the exhibit. Representatives will be on hand throughout the week of the Farm Show to answer questions about the activities of these organizations and membership. If you are interested in joining a local chapter of the SPA, please stop by the exhibit and receive three past issues of the SPA journal for joining at the Farm Show.

The 20-foot long replica dugout canoe has been an anchor in the exhibit for all to enjoy. Family traditions of group photos every year makes this a popular stop.  Everyone is welcome to stop by and test it out by taking a seat inside and imagining how it would have been to live hundreds of years ago with this as one of the main modes of transportation. You can take in our poster and look at the photos about how dugout canoes were made and how the State Museum’s archaeologists and volunteers made this exact replica using traditional methods and traditional stone tools.

Children enjoying the dugout canoe

The 2020 State Museum’s Farm Show exhibit will also be connected to and integrated with the Pennsylvania State Archives exhibit. The State Archives has been a part of the Farm Show for a few years now, this being their third year, and has become a key component of the Farm Show. The Archive’s exhibit provides individuals with access to dig through historic records and discover new information about their family history. This year they will also feature an opportunity to win a free DNA kit from Ancestry, so make sure to stop by and sign up!

Individuals searching archives data with staff help 

We will continue to share Pennsylvania’s natural and cultural history with all who wish to learn, so please stop by and visit us in the coming week at the PA State Farm Show. We would like to thank all of you for your interest in Pennsylvania’s history and we wish you all a Happy New Year as we continue to Preserve Pennsylvania’s Past for the Future. 

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

Toys through Time

This week the letter T takes its turn in the alphabet cycle and we’re going to take a trip through time with Toys. Toys come in many forms and their function is often thought of as purely entertainment, but in reality toys are an important tool in the development of our cultures.  Social skills develop from interaction with others while playing games such as dominoes or marbles.  Toys which aid in teaching a skill or lesson are educational, and yet other toys serve to stimulate creativity and independent thought. 

Toys in the archaeological record generally represent a group that is often left out of the historic record, and barely evidenced in prehistory.  Children constitute this silent group.  This week we are going to examine a few of the toys in our collection and look at how those toys aid and influence childhood development.

As previously stated the presence of children in the prehistoric record is often difficult to identify.  Early cultures were likely very nurturing of their children due to high infant mortality rates, but anthropologists believe that children who survived infancy were assigned chores at an early age.  Our first example is a small clay pinch pot made by a child, possibly a girl learning to make clay pottery.  Archaeologists often refer to these as “toy pots” because of their crude construction and childlike qualities. Women were likely responsible for making clay pots for cooking and storage, as men assumed the role of hunters who would travel seasonally large distances from the village.  If women were making pottery and caring for young children, it is likely that involvement in the task of making pottery developed at an early age.  While this could be considered an educational toy, it also lends itself to creative thought.

pinch pots / toy pots 36La3 Strickler Site

Our next example is a toy, but also a skill builder.  The cup and pin game taught patience and hand-eye coordination.  Accuracy and mental alertness were important skills for hunting and fishing and the social interaction was important in building trust, all necessary tools for survival. The elements of this game are simple and were readily available on prehistoric sites.  Animal bones, usually deer or caribou toe bones were hollowed out and strung on cordage with a bone or wood pin at the other end.  A piece of leather or fur at the other end of the cordage provided weight.  Holding the pin the player would swing the bones up and try to insert the pin through the center of the hollowed bones.  Points were scored based on which bone was caught on the pin.  This traditional game is still played in various forms by Native peoples today.

pin and cup game - ethnographic collection State Museum of PA

Marbles are another example of a simple element which requires accuracy, practice and skill. While our previous blog traced the changes over time in the marble form, our focus here is on the social play and skill developed from the game. Marbles did not require an organized team with uniforms and special playing fields. It was a “pick-up” game something easily transported and readily played amongst a group on any flat surface. To state that it is a simple game might not be accurate if you are a gamer, proficient in the lingo and spot on with a shooter. The nature of the game allowed for play at an early age, but did not limit itself to youth as archaeologically marbles have been found in concentrations in industrial settings as well. Marbles have evolved from merely a social game into marble collecting and of course, to a modern hand held version for your iphone.

Late 19th/20th Century marbles from 36Er241, Fuhrman House Site excavated for the Lake View Landfill Project by Wilbur Smith Associates.

Some toys are often identified as gender specific, an example of this is a doll.  Anthropologists have studied the social interaction of children with toys for decades and the debate lingers as to what is learned behavior based on influences from society and what is actually biological choice in what a child plays with.  The maternal or paternal instinct that is derived from playing with dolls is an example of a toy that is also a teaching tool.  Our society often taboos boys playing with dolls as child rearing is traditionally viewed as a role performed by women. However, our society is changing. As more women enter the workplace and more men either by choice or necessity are responsible for child care, the doll has evolved from a fairly simple toy for learning nurturing skills to a learning tool for anything from infant CPR to a pregnancy prevention tool.

Realworks baby doll

Dolls are also a form of creative play and children play with dressing dolls in various clothes or fashioning the doll’s hair in new styles.  The clothes that dolls are dressed in are a reflection of the culture surrounding them.  Children are often presented with dolls in native costumes representing various foreign countries. This is often a child’s first exposure to foreign cultures.  These cornhusk dolls are dressed in traditional native dress and are examples of dolls dressed to represent various cultures.  Obviously the doll is a learning tool, but instead of its focus on nurturing, it is now functioning to make society more accepting of diversity.

Seneca Corn husk dolls in traditional post-contact dress

Children’s dishes and toy tableware are often recovered on archaeological sites. During the Victorian Era manufactured toys are more prevalent and toys become more finished and reformed, often losing some of the creative play elements necessary with early toys. This was especially true of fancy table wares produced in miniature for children to replicate adult tableware of the era. Wealthy families could purchase these elaborate table wares for their children, while the poorer children of this era played with wooden blocks and cloth dolls. It is during the late 19th and 20th centuries that elaborate table settings are manufactured and the etiquette of table manners develops. So while these children’s sets were for enjoyment, they were subtly teaching table manners and etiquette to children.

Pearlware teapot from Metropolitan Detention Center Excavations, Philadelphia

Increased productivity in manufacturing allowed for more children to play with these miniature sets of table ware, but also decreased the size and quality of the toy.

enamel toy pitcher from Leetsdale excavations 36Al 480


minature porcelain pitcher from Furhman House 36Er241

Moving thru the 21st century in our journey thru toys brings the introduction of a new material for manufactured toys- plastic. With the development of plastic, toy manufacturing explodes and a multi-billion dollar industry is born. Toys evolve from simple forms often hand crafted from available products, to massively produced toys attainable in any number of ways. Toys become inserts in cereal and Cracker Jack boxes, treats at the dentist for good oral hygiene and give-a-ways at bank and shopping center promotions.

"offical" Jack Webb Dragnet police whistle from Eckley Miners' Village 36Lu298

Books and comics based on fictionalized characters provided manufacturers yet another avenue of marketing for toys.  Movies based on these characters added to the demand for whistles, glasses, toy guns, cars, planes and the list goes on.   This mass distribution of toys allows for a greater influence on society by toy manufacturers and a broader populous.  Secondary to this mass production is the desire to collect toys for monetary or sentimental reasons. The popularity of mass produced toys amongst adults and children will make our jobs more difficult in the future as archaeologists search for evidence of children in the archaeological record of a site.  We hope you’ve enjoyed this trip through toy time and just maybe for a fleeting moment we've stirred a favorite childhood memory of your very own.

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

 

E is for evolution – a concept that is central to all archaeological research

E is for Egyptologist, English gun flint and experimental archaeology (which we have discussed several times in the past). But this week’s “E” is for evolution. – a concept that is central to all archaeological research. The word evolution simply means change through time. The change is not necessarily good or bad, positive or negative. Biological evolution is defined as change in a population’s gene pool over time. Archaeologists focus on cultural evolution but we have borrowed many concepts from the biologists. Archaeologists ask: Why does culture change? How does it change and can we predict how and when significant changes will occur? In this week’s blog, we would like to briefly review the parallels between biological and cultural evolution that archaeologists use to describe and analyze the evolution of prehistoric cultures.

In the 19th century, anthropologists, lead by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan assumed that cultural evolution was driven by an innate force towards progress; it was goal oriented and the human condition was constantly improving. From the perspective of the middle and upper class of western society, life had definitely improved over previous times. However, this was not true for the lower working class or the non-western societies who were being exploited for their natural resources and cheap labor. Anthropologists (but mostly sociologists) during the late 19th and early 20th century were impressed with the systematic logic of Darwinian evolution and used terms such as exploitation, competition and survival of the fittest (a phrase coined by Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin) to justify the abuse of other people and cultures. In hind sight we call this social Darwinism.

By the 1950s, biologists had discovered the nature of genes and had developed a new understanding of biological evolution (called the “New Synthesis). Populations of animals and plants contain an incredible variety of traits. The total of these traits within a population is called the gene pool. The combination of these traits represents the adaptation of the population. (Adaptation can be defined as a characteristic of a population selected by the environment that by its existence improves the chances of survival and also allows for exploitation of the environment (Jurmain et al. 2008). Variety within the gene pool is affected (frequently increased) by gene flow (e.g. from other populations), mutations (e.g. creating new genetic material) and random genetic drift (e.g. chance changes in the gene pool frequently due to accidents). The driving force in biological evolution is natural selection. Nature selects the most advantageous combinations of traits within individuals for survival. Natural selection operates on individuals but evolution occurs in populations. As the environment (in all of its aspects) changes, for example, from warm to cold or predators become faster or more intelligent, the selective factors change and the adaptation evolves.

In the 1960s, archaeologists were influenced by cultural ecology and began to examine prehistoric cultures from an ecological perspective – as part of the environmental system. Using an elaboration on a definition for culture developed by Leslie White in 1959, Lewis Binford defined “Culture is an extra-somatic adaptive strategy that is employed in the integration of a society with its environment and with other cultural systems” (Lewis Binford 1965:205). Archaeologists of the 1960s viewed culture as an adaptive system and they focused on the processes that affected this system. Technology, subsistence, demography and ecology are major factors in the adaptive system and accessible in the archaeological record. This was the beginning of processual archaeology that continues to dominate (with some modifications) the profession today.

Archaeologists now describe cultural evolution as changes in the adaptive strategy or changes in the adaptive system. Changes in culture are described as responses to the natural and cultural environment. Artifacts, features, community patterns and settlement patterns are the traits of a prehistoric culture. They are the material remains of the adaptive strategy. The development and evolution of this strategy is driven by natural selection. Those cultures that can extract sufficient calories from the environment, educate the next generation and reproduce sufficient offspring will be successful (or selected).

When Darwinian concepts are applied to human culture in this manner it works well with hunting and gathering societies. Their adaptive strategy is more clearly related to the natural environment. Certainly, their social organization (how they were organized into groups), the relationship between males and females; and their belief system were essential factors of their adaptive strategy. However, these are frequently difficult to identify in the archaeological record. And the processual archaeologists do not feel they are the most significant catalysts for change.

As an example, much of the Archaic period in Pennsylvania can be explained as a transition from a Pleistocene environment followed by a slow intensification of the adaptation (adding a variety of plant processing tools) due to an increasing human population. For the most part, it was a technological response to a changing cultural environment. However, by the Transitional period, characterized by broadspears, steatite bowls, large cooking hearths and extensive trade, it would appear that the adaptive strategy becomes more complex and it included increased inter-group social cohesion or communication. The nature of the adaptive strategy changed during the Transitional period from one emphasizing a technological response to an adaptive strategy emphasizing a significant social component. During the subsequent Woodland period, there is a change in the focus of the subsistence pattern toward the domestication of plant foods and the social component becomes even more significant.

The use of biological concepts to explain cultural evolution is a useful conceptual model and one easily applied to the prehistoric archaeology of the Middle Atlantic region. Unfortunately, we know that the analogy with biological evolution has a flaw. Biological evolution emphasizes populations and impersonal processes such as gene flow, mutation and random genetic drift. Echoing a critique from the 1980s “Where are the people behind these proesses?” Cultural change can also be influenced by individuals. Simply look at the influence of charismatic leaders during the 20th century for the affect of single individuals on cultural evolution. This is the critique of the post-processual archaeologists and maybe we can cover this topic when we get to the letter “P”.

References:

Binford, Lewis. R. 1965 Archaeological Systematics and the Study of Cultural Process, American Antiquity, 31(2 Part 1): 203-210.

Jurmain, Robert, Lynn Kilgore, Wenda Trevathan and Russell Ciochon 2008 Introduction to Physical Anthropology, eleventh edition, Thomson- Wadsworth

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

Flushing out Arch Street...

As we left the excavations at 1325/1327 Arch Street Philadelphia last week, a large ceramic vessel was emerging from the ash of a feature located within the five bay brick foundation. Anticipation and hopes were growing that this vessel may hold the answers to how the five bay brick foundation was used and perhaps help archaeologists to interpret and date the feature…

Excavations of the interior of the brick foundation exposed the top of a large ceramic vessel

Although the vessel was in surprisingly good condition, and is the only one of its kind in the Archaeological collections of The Pennsylvania State Museum, it was not associated with the brick foundation. It was instead a very ornate and early toilet.

Toilet excavated from brick foundation at 1327 Arch Street Philadelphia

Maker's Mark for Trenton Potteries Company

The toilet’s maker’s mark shows that it was manufactured at the Trenton Potteries Company of Trenton New Jersey in 1902. This date suggests that it was added towards the end of the Cresswell’s occupation of the home. According to the historic record, Robert Cresswell leaves the property to his wife Elizabeth in 1892 and by the time of the 1900 census it appears that she may have taken boarders into the home. Although she retains ownership of the home at 1327 Arch Street until 1910, research indicates that she no longer lives there after 1900.

If Mrs. Cresswell owns the home in 1902, then she must have installed the toilet. The trouble with this hypothesis is that the home was used as a boarding house from about 1900 thru about 1920. It doesn’t seem likely that this highly decorative toilet would be installed for working class boarders. Which begs the question where did it come from and why is it here? As is often the case in archaeology, the closer we think we are to the answers, the more questions we actually raise.


We did some research on toilet manufacturing and contacted some vintage bath fixture shops (Historic Houseparts, Inc. and Vintage Plumbing) and they were able to supply us with some specifics on our toilet. What we learned is that this particular toilet is a front washout style bowl, this was one of the earliest and most “primitive” ceramic toilet bowls invented. It has not been sold in the U.S. for about a hundred years and is now only found in a few places in Europe. This design would have most likely used a pull chain attached to a tank that was mounted on the wall above the toilet. The plain undecorated version of this toilet would have been a very common and inexpensive style at the turn of the 20th century, exactly what we would expect to find in a boarding / tenement setting.

The heavily ornamented embossed bowl would have been reserved for the upper class. They were the people that were more inclined and able to spend the money on high style. During the Victorian era people of means surrounded themselves with ornately decorated homes and objects, even in the bathroom, and this particular design “was one of the most creative”. The claw foot was a very popular motif on all things from furniture to bathtubs. It is quite possible that this design was manufactured specifically for Fleck Brothers Manufacturing Company; their 1899 catalog depicts a similarly ornate bowl. Fleck Brothers was located at 50 North 5th Street in Philadelphia so it would have been accessible to the Cresswell’s.




























Images in the Fleck Brother's 1899 Catalog

Mrs. Cresswell had the means to install fine furnishings in the home, but why she would spend the additional money on an ornate toilet over the plain toilets typically installed in boarding homes is a question we can not answer. Is it possible that she loved this home that she had lived in for nearly fifty years and wanted to outfit it with fine furnishings? The transition to working class neighborhood was just beginning- was this an attempt to retain civility and status in her home? Can you relate these questions to your own human behavior and inclinations?


It was once considered a very taboo topic to discuss sanitary disposal or even acknowledge such basic human practices. Anyone that dared to “study” such subjects was seldom taken seriously and more likely to be considered deranged. Perhaps that is why the knowledge of waste removal has come and gone so many times throughout human history. From as far back as 2500 B.C. the Harrappa civilization in what is now India, had cities that were laid out on a grid with sewer drains under the roads. The Crete’s and Roman’s also had water born waste removal in their cities. As the study of man, i.e. Anthropology has evolved to consider ALL aspects of human behavior we have found much value in studying even those objects we once took for granted.

The artifacts left by those before us, be it during pre-history or the historic period are the physical evidence of lifeways often undocumented and lost to history. These traces of who we are provide archaeologists with the connection to what matters to individuals and societies and helps anthropologists predict changes in society. Reflect for a moment on the transformation of socioeconomic levels of these occupants of 1327 Arch Street in Philadelphia during the transition from the19th to 20th centuries at the height of the Industrial Revolution.

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

I wish there had been a census taken during prehistoric times

While many of you are completing the 2010 Census form, I am wondering how many Indians lived in Pennsylvania prior to European contact and how many lived here 10,000 years ago. Our blog this week touches on why determining population density during prehistoric times is important and how methods are used to achieve this objective.

As we all know, the goal of archaeology is to understand past cultural behavior – how people lived, how they organized themselves, their religious beliefs – and why their culture changed. We all agree that the environment can cause culture change and that it has affected cultural development. Obviously, climate (only one aspect of the environment) will affect the foods people eat and the types of food they can grow. Long term changes in climate, the end of the Ice Age, for example, had significant affects on the development of culture.

Technology and invention, such as the use and control of fire, the invention of the wheel, agriculture, or metal tools also had a significant affect on the lives of ancient people. Neighboring cultures also had their effects on others. For example, in the Upper Ohio Valley of western Pennsylvania, maize was being used nearly a thousand years prior to its use in the Delaware Valley. This is a complex issue, but part of the reason is that the cultures in the Upper Ohio were closely tied to the Mississippi Valley where the use of maize dates to at least 3000 years ago.
Population density is a fourth factor that some archaeologists consider to be very important in affecting the development of culture. But, unlike the environment, technology and the diffusion of ideas from other cultures, it is very difficult to trace. Some archaeologists argue that population density has had a very significant bearing on cultural developments and I would state that growing population density was the single most significant factor in affecting prehistoric cultures in Pennsylvania over the past 5000 years. On the other hand, many would argue that a combination of environmental and technological factors were of equal or greater importance. For example, the adoption of agriculture by the Indians of the Susquehanna Valley resulted in large settled villages, a tribal social organization and widespread warfare. I would say that an increasing population before the introduction of agriculture required Indians to adopt farming to feed their families. Over time, hunting and gathering simply could not support large numbers of people. There is good evidence that shows farming requires more labor intensive effort than hunting and gathering of wild foods. Assuming that people are basically lazy, they are not going to take on a new technology unless it is in some way, advantageous to do so.

To prove that population growth is a prime cause in cultural development, we must be able to demonstrate that population density is increasing to a critical point prior to technological development . And herein lies the problem. How do we determine absolute population size or even relative population density prior to written records?
Within a hundred years of their arrival Europeans were describing Indian villages and estimating the numbers of people they contained. Archaeologists have taken these numbers and applied them to prehistoric villages, specifically to the number of people per household which allows for hypothesizing population estimates for the period of time just prior to European contact. But what do we do for the period before the time people lived in relatively permanent hamlets and villages? How do we determine the number of people living in a nomadic hunting and gathering camp? In Pennsylvania 2000 years ago, there are very few examples of houses that have survived the ravages of time so it is impossible to extend this method very far into the distant past.

Another method that archaeologists use to reconstruct prehistoric demographics is to count the number of archaeological sites per time period. Sites can be roughly dated in time based on projectile point types and pottery types. Below is a graph using this method.




This graph illustrates an initial sharp population increase about 9000 years ago as the deciduous forest moves into Pennsylvania, followed by 4000 years of steady growth. At this time the rate begins to advance more rapidly. Between 1000 and 2000 years ago there seems to be a sharp population decline, however, most archaeologists believe this is not real. There are not many distinctive projectile point or pottery types for this time period (the Middle Woodland) so these numbers are artificially low. After this time, however, there is a very sharp rise in population during the Late Woodland Period when agriculture was developing across much of Pennsylvania. The graph needs to be broken into finer time periods but clearly there is evidence for a population increase prior to the adoption of agriculture.

Many, if not most archaeologists, do not accept this method as a valid procedure for documenting population change. We know that some projectile point types cover a very broad time range and some types crosscut other time periods. An example of this typological crosscutting is the triangular projectile point type. It is typically associated with the Late Woodland Period where such objects were used as arrow points. However, triangular forms were also used during the Late Archaic Period as atlatl dart points and there does not seem to be any way to determine the difference between these and their latter counterparts. Therefore, the Late Archaic numbers are likely too low and the Late Woodland numbers are likely too high.
Population density is clearly an important variable in the equation of determining cultural change. However, until archaeologists develop better methods for determining prehistoric population size density, the affects of this variable will largely remain speculative.



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

State Museum Archaeologist Assists in Death Scene Investigation during High School Forensic Science Class

Dr. Kurt Carr, Senior Curator from the State Museum of Pennsylvania, with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, assisted Ms. Evans with a simulated Archaeology excavation. The excavation is part of a lesson on Forensic Anthropology in Ms. Evans's three Forensic Science classes at Susquehanna Township High School, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Eighty high school 11th and 12th grade students worked at the death scene with Dr. Carr. The 100 square meter excavation site is an open, dirt covered, area outside the high school building. The students uncovered and mapped deer skeletal remains at the site.

The skeletal remains were placed in the site with related “artifacts”, that when uncovered and mapped, will “tell the story” of what happened in the deaths of two deer. Under the direction of Dr. Carr, the Forensics students used archaeological techniques, methods and theory in their investigation into the deaths of the two deer. The deer skeletal remains are being “recycled” from the classes’ labs on Forensic Entomology at the high school and were donated by the Pennsylvania Game Commission.


Forensic Science students set up a measurement grid for the excavation. They then walked across the surface of the site mapping the location of bones and related artifacts (potential evidence). The goal of today's activities was to decide the best locations to excavate. Based on this surface collection strategy, student teams picked the square meter of the excavation in which they wanted to search for more evidence. They returned on Friday with trowel in hand to uncover the bones buried in the ground.



On the second day of the investigation, the Forensics Science students worked in teams to excavate a single unit at the site. Under the supervision of State Museum archaeologists, the investigators mapped, bagged and labeled the artifacts found on the surface of their unit. Units are 1 square meter areas on the 100 square meter site. The units have been named using a alphanumeric system. Once the surface artifacts were removed, the investigators used trowels, brushes and dust pans to remove the soil.


After uncovering the buried artifacts, investigators were instructed to map the location of the artifact using tape measures and record this measurement to graph paper. Toward the end of the day, investigators observed a pattern starting to emerge that would "tell the story" of what happened at 36Da231. (Final Report on the Investigation at 36Da231 to come.)


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