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Digging in Salt Lake City, July 2005! |
This is the excavation blog for the third and final week of fieldwork, July 22-30, 2005. Tim Scarlett, Chris Merritt, and guests will post their thoughts and images here as the dig moves ahead over the month of July. We'll let you know what we think we've learned and "what it all means" as we dig deeper into the earth at the Petersen Pottery. You can jump directly to the most recent entry by clicking here. Enjoy!Jump back to week 1 (the beginning). Jump back to week 2.
July 23rd, 2005: Timothy Scarlett (at 8:15 pm)I skipped a post yesterday, because I needed to take an evening off and catch up on some other things. The weather looked like rain in the mountains and I'd not had a shower in about four days, so I ditched the campground for a night in a hotel in town. After a shower and a run to the laundromat, I'm feeling ready to return to the campground tonight! Over the past two days we've had several guests from the local media. Some of the reports have come out, including these stories: The Deseret Morning News coverage is here. The Salt Lake Tribune article is here. KSL-NBC TV5 coverage is here. (I didn't see the story since we were still digging when it aired, but I hear it was great!) ABC 4 also taped a story, but I didn't see it either. I'll keep an eye on their website and post it when it appears. I'm very grateful to the news outlets who shared the story. It really helps us get out the word about the research and how much of Utah's history is still under our feet throughout the valley. Today was a great day for digging! The sun raised us only into the low nineties which made for great working conditions. I asked Chris to leave the dog burials for a while and help me to excavate the next layer in 2N0W and 2N2W. He and I spent the morning excavating through the last layer we'd exposed during the past few days. This strata was hard packed and the surface was literally jammed full of terra cotta roof tile and pottery fragments:
The picture on the above left shows an overview in which you can see the larger pot and tile fragments. In the above right, taken looking east, one can see much more detail. The layer proved to be a thickly deposited sheet of broken roof tile and pot sherds. Excavation through the overlaying sediment revealed something quite remarkable. We've discovered one of the workshop floors, preserved so well that we can see how Frederick built it. Notice the difference in the above right image with the detailed shot below following excavation: This area, just north of the baulk in 0N0W first revealed a line of bricks. You can actually see their tops just uncovered in the photos above. Petersen started his construction when the ground had a rich, brown silt. That's the layer which seems to underlie the floor he built, particularly in the area to the north. He lay down the bricks in a line and set them in a clayey soil. Then he spread a thick layer of broken roof tile fragments to the south of the bricks, often three or four courses thick. He packed them in using the same clayey sediment and then packed down the clay into a solid and level floor. In the photo above, Kirk Henrichsen had just finished helping me clear the clay from the tops of the tiles. You can see the tiles in 0N2W that Chris exposed earlier in the day. Chris also exposed a broken crock pot which can be seen in the picture. The fragments are those with the rich orange color scattered over the picture's foreground. The fragments lay flat on the tile pieces, are stuck in the clay overlaying the brick alignment, and on the ground surface adjoining the floor. I shot a 1 minute film this morning while Chris cleaned off the largest fragment, it's handle, and decorative banding. I'll try to figure a way to post it to the site as soon as I can, but being removed from our server makes this difficult. As you might imagine, all this talk of roof tile has left us with lots of questions. Why so much tile? Was Frederick making tile for other people? How long did he make tile?
Yes, that screen is FULL of broken roof tile, so are BOTH buckets behind me! Chris and I are now talking about how to handle all this tile- we've already measured 30 gallons. No joke! All the tile is broken, creating what must be the most remarkable jigsaw puzzle ever created! We've started to talk about sampling and research designs. We can now see that we have to divide our excavations into two major contexts. The area on the floor is one context. Keep in mind that it may have been a ramada with a patio- a paved work area, covered by a roof, but with no walls (like a sandy ramada at the beach!). All this may also have been in a framed building with wooden walls. Regardless, the patio surface has many more fragments of terra cotta tile. The northern portion of the dig adjoins the floor, but included a higher proportion of pottery "wasters" than tile fragments. Among these broken pieces of ware are lots of crocks, storage jars, and pans like those pictured above. Today's dig, however, produced some new forms we've never seen before. We found tiny fragments of unglazed tableware- especially some little pieces of bowls. We noticed at least one fragment where Frederick used a coggle wheel to create a little roulette design. I'll do my best to get some pictures of them on the site, but when this project turns to the lab phase, we'll post both detailed scans and drawings of the different pots and their decorations! We believe that the northern and southern halves of our excavation have very different kinds of deposits now. I'll let you know what we are able to determine about what activities occurred in each area. We also found our first two pieces of kiln furniture- those little bits of clay that potters use to keep the glaze on one pot from sticking to another pot while a liquid. Any reader that has made pottery might remember using stilts, the little tripods that keep pots separate in the kiln. Stilts are one type of kiln furniture. You can see pictures of some archaeological examples of kiln furniture at the Massachusetts Historical Commission site here, but the fragments we've found look nothing like this. Neither do they look anything like, interestingly enough, the kiln furniture excavated by volunteers at W. H. R. O. Behrman's kiln site at the Mormon town of Brigham City, Arizona. Behrman was also a Danish immigrant who worked around Utah before and after his time in Arizona. Chris has exposed most of the upper dog's skeleton. In the picture below, you can see the first dog in profile and the skull of the second dog just behind and underneath the first skull. From the upper dog's skull, you can just make out the cervical vertebrae, the scapula, the thoracic vertebrae, some lumbar vertebrae, the ischium (part of the pelvis) and femur, and the caudal vertebrae:
Compare this dog with the cat skeleton illustrated here! His legs and feet are in the sidewall of the baulk. Given the dog's position, we can not finish excavating the feature without removing the baulk. Considering our research goals, our time remaining for excavation, and that the dogs were interred by their owner during the 20th century, we will probably cover the bones and pedestal them for the remainder of the excavation. We will then cover the bones with clean sand and backfill over the grave, leaving them where their original owner interred them. Since we've scientifically recorded them, a future archaeologist studying the role of pets during the early 20th century will be able to return to the site and excavate them if needed. Properly reburied the bones will easily last another century in the ground and I'm not willing to rush their excavation if they don't contribute to our pressing research questions. I promise to post some of the feedback I've gotten from my colleagues about the feathers. We'll also try to get the movie and more images up soon. Chris goes back to the office as a seasonal cultural resources technician for the United States Forest Service on Monday, so tomorrow will be his last full day on the dig. He will post about his research soon, however. It is nearing 10pm, and I must head to the campground for some sleep. July 24th, 2005: Timothy Scarlett (at 5:45 pm)Chris and I had a good day today. We began with a complete cleaning and photography of the site with it's exposed sediment layers. After the photos, we mapped and plotted the site. I spent a good deal of the day drawing the exposed tile in Feature 3 (the floor mentioned above). I wanted some very detailed records of how Petersen built the surface upon which he worked. We think, based upon our cleaned up look at the feature, that Petersen may only have built a section of the floor in this manner, rather than perhaps the entire floor. I spent most of the day trying to figure this out. Chris finished his last full day in the field removing the clay layer which overlay the rich brown silt. The silt is very clean and soft, hardly compacted at all like the clayey layers above it. Here are two different views of the start of today's digging:
One view looking eastward at the tile floor and feature 3.
Today we found a new vantage point to shoot some photos. I really like this angle, because it captures the nicely layered stratigraphy in the western sidewall while also showing the tile floor. I'll use this vantage point as much as I can, but look at where I'm standing:
It's a great platform to shoot from, but it does have one drawback. There are a couple of dogs on both sides of that particular fence/wall. None of them will like having me there, so I will only be able to climb up when the big dogs are in their respective houses! Chris began removing the clay layers that overlay the tiles and the brown silt in the two western units. He began collecting the fragments of that bright orange storage crock pictured above. The pot fragments lay flat on the set tiles, as if they were dropped there just before the clay was dumped over them. Some of the fragments are also stuck in the clay to the north of the floor surface. This created quite a problem for us to interpret- how did the pot fragments from one pot get deposited both on top of the floor and within the clay that we thought Frederick used to plaster the floor? Our attempts to ferret out an answer were further frustrated when Chris discovered that the fragments are actually from two very similar pots. Perhaps the pots were already broken and mixed with the clay while it was in the wheelbarrow or wagon? Frederick then dumped the barrow and some of the crock frags landed flat on the floor while others remained jumbled in the mass of clay. Perhaps the crock broke on the floor while Frederick was building it, but some of the fragments got mixed into the extra clay he piled to one side for use later. I need to think about this some more. Tomorrow, I expect to work on my own to bisect the floor and start looking beneath it. I expect that there are older layers yet that underlay the floor. In fact, I really think there must be! Where else would Frederick get all the tile to build the floor if he weren't already making tile at the time? I hope that some artifacts mixed with the tiles themselves or something underneath them will allow me to get a good date for the construction of the floor surface. So far we've found one very tiny fragment of "pearlware" white ceramic, smaller than a half a penny, which sat directly upon the layer adjoining the floor to the north. This fragment may yield the most chronological information, but the date could be problematic for many reasons. I'll keep you posted. I've heard people say that there are "hard sciences" and "soft sciences." When it comes to dating and figuring out stratigraphy, archaeology is best thought of as one of the "difficult sciences" which must mix the others together. I'm also afraid that this web page is getting so large that people with dial-up connections may have problems. I'll consider breaking it up and archiving some of the older entries. More tomorrow. July 26th, 2005: Christopher Merritt (posted the next day by Tim at 9:00 pm)“Its distances were terrifying, its cloudbursts catastrophic, its beauty flamboyant and bizarre and allied with death. Its droughts and its heat were withering. Almost more than the Great Basin deserts, it was a dead land. The ages lay dead in its brilliant strata, and the mud housed of the Ho-ho-kim rotted dryly in caves and gulches. Nobody else wanted it...” --Wallace Stegner referring to Utah (1942:51)
In 1847, almost 2,000 Mormon pioneers, fleeing religious persecution and seeking to establish a new kingdom in desert, settled on the western front of the Wasatch Mountain Range in Utah (Brown et al. 1994: 82). The initial group of settlers came with plans for the construction of a model city, based on and supported by their religion and church hierarchy. By 1870, the population of the Salt Lake City area had expanded to 18,000 strong with satellite settlements located from Idaho to Arizona and from California to Colorado (1994:84). Brigham Young and the church leadership intentionally sent church members to set up colonies dispersed across the Great Basin, in order to begin claiming a large segment of the west for the creation of an independent Mormon state, called Deseret (Jackson 1978:317-320). Over time, forty-five potteries, like Frederick Petersen's, sprung up in the Mormon communities and provided necessary services to the local populations for cash or barter. In addition, pottery produced at these shops found their way across the Great Basin through the practice of tithing, a relatively unique means of poverty relief instituted in the LDS Church. The unique role of Mormon potteries in the LDS settlement of the Great Basin creates an incredible opportunity to understand a specific historic economic pattern. Due to the characteristics of the assemblage, historical records, and archaeometrics, researchers can answer many important historical questions about LDS communities.
Figure 1: Map of collections currently under investigation.
Access to archaeological collections of Mormon pottery from historical societies, museums, and federal agencies provides the basic data set for the proposed study. I have been coordinating with archaeologists and museums across Utah and Nevada to gain access to a number of collections. Particularly, I am looking at collections from Fort Douglas (discussed below), Salt Lake City's Social Hall, Cove Fort near Cedar City, Hamblin near St. George, Ruby Valley Pony Express Station in Nevada, and Genoa, a now-abandoned Mormon townsite in western Nevada, and others.. As discussed earlier in this blog, just last Thursday I visited the Utah Museum of Natural History on the University of Utah campus to look at one collection for my analysis. With help of the curatorial staff I perused the 15 boxes of artifacts from excavations at Fort Douglas, a federal military facility in operation since the latter parts of the 19 th century. After sorting through hundreds of plastic baggies, I found approximately 25-30 pieces of pottery suitable for study. At this time I am only planning to sample 10 items from each of my five potential collections.
So what am I doing with these samples? Once gathered, I will submit these samples for Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA), an old yet provocative technology. Samples for the analysis will be sent to the Missouri University Research Reactor's Archaeometry Laboratory under the direction of Michael Glascock. The Missouri University Research Reactor (MURR) has very specific guidelines for the submission, retention, and analysis of various archaeological materials. Minimum size of these samples for INAA is a 2-gram sample of pottery that is 3 to 4 square centimeters in area, and for clay, the sample must be a dry 50 grams in weight (Glascock et al. 2003). The MURR retains a small portion of each submitted sample for their own database, hence the large size of required samples. Using samples of pottery and clay in the proportions discussed above, researchers place the materials in the reactor for 5 seconds. Specific elements within the pottery and clay decay at different rates after irradiation within the reactor. Because of this fact, measurements of gamma ray emission take place after 25 minutes for short-lived elements, 2 weeks for medium-life elements, and final recording takes place 5 weeks after irradiation (Lizee et al. 1995:519).
Table 1:
From: Lizee et al. 1995 Each potter had different sources of clay for their pottery production, and each had a unique elemental signature. INAA provides the means to piece together a fractured picture of America's past, through nothing more than collections of electrons and neutrons. After analysis of source clay, wasters, and furniture, the specific elemental signature of the samples will allow researchers to determine the site of pottery production, and even allow discussion of the individual potter when tied in with historical documentation. When compared pottery samples from archaeological or museum collections should cluster around a clay sample that is localized to a particular potter. This scientific process will allow me, the researcher, to make educated inferences about past processes of commodity exchange. Where did a particular potter's wares go? How and why did they go there? When did a potter's ware show up in particular places? How did kinship and/or tithing effect the spread of a particular potter's ware? These questions and more are at the core of understanding our collective American history, and is not relegated purely to Mormon settled communities.
Over the next year I will engross myself in the history of the LDS church, settlement of the Great Basin, and become incredibly familiar with every detail of Frederick Petersen's fascinating life. At the end of my time at Michigan Tech, I hope to present a Master's thesis worthy of Frederick Petersen, his hundreds of pioneer potter colleagues, and the multitudes of surviving descendants. This dig, the artifacts we found, and the life story of a single potter prospering in the desert, provides the necessary tangible links to the past. These tangibles are the greatest part of archaeology, for when you hold a pot sherd in your hand; you are holding a fragile piece of irreplaceable history.
References Cited
Brown, S. Kent, Donald Q. Cannon, and Richard H. Jackson, eds 1994 Historical Atlas of Mormonism . Simon and Schuster: New York, NY.
Glascock, Michael D. and Hector Neff 2003 Neutron Activation Analysis and Provenance Research in Archaeology . Measurement Science and Technology, 14:1516-1526.
Jackson, Richard H. 1978 Mormon Perception and Settlement. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 68(3):317-334. Lizee, Jonathan M., Hector Neff, and Michael D. Glascock 1995 Clay Acquisition and Vessel Distribution Patterns: Neutron Activation Analysis of Late Windsor and Shantok Tradition Ceramics from Southern New England. American Antiquity 60(3):515-530.
Stegner, Wallace 1942 Mormon Country . Duell, Sloan, and Pearce: New York, NY.
July 27th, 2005: Timothy Scarlett (at 9:00 pm)I've had a good two days on the dig site. Chris returned to work for the US Forest Service, but a few colleagues and friends have stepped up to help me at the site. We've just about "hit bottom" on the dig. We removed the tile floor layer from around most of three of the excavation units, fully exposing the brown silty clay underneath. The sherds mixed with the floor and underneath the tile are among the oldest we've yet found. Here's one example of a decorative pattern:
We left most of the tile and clay floor in 0N0W intact and will backfill over it. This is the best way to preserve the feature for study by future archaeologists. If the landowner plans to disturb that part of the ground, he can give me a call and I'll work to return and excavate the rest of the feature before construction begins. The silty clay under the floor is a rich brown color and is compact. We began troweling it down, scraping off thin layers, and quickly discovered that it was almost sterile (almost no artifacts of any kind) and quickly became increasingly more compact and difficult to dig. This layer is important to our study, so we've struggled to understand how it formed. Let me explain- this layer underlies all the excavation units- including the tile floor and to the north of the floor. This means that the clay layer was the ground surface upon which the Petersen family walked before they built the floor. We've been trying to figure out when the floor was built, and our early impression of the excavated materials does not really help us answer that question. The Petersen's were very clean builders! Their construction did not include a bunch of other trash- the pieces of ceramic or glass to which we can assign dates. That's a quandary for us. The clay, however, proved to be very clean. Since the clay proved so hard, we decided to do get a quick look into and beneath it. I worked with Kirk Henrichsen to dig a new shovel test probe into the clay to see how far down it continued before a new level began. We found some pottery artifacts made by Frederick in the first few centimeters of the layer. As a result, I spent the last two days using a pulaski to scrape sediment in two larger test trenches into the silty clay. The pulaski is sort of a pick-hoe combination tool that the USFS uses for firefighting, which you can read about here. I'm now just about 2 meters below datum, about 5 feet below the ground level. As it turns out- both trenches show that the clay has a few artifacts in the first 10 centimeters, but then becomes sterile. From this fact I tentatively conclude that Frederick built his clay-tile shop floor upon the ground he found in the area. I'm still a bit hesitant because a potter's job requires a number of possible tasks that might produce a deep, clean deposit of clay. I might be digging in his clay washing pit, for example! It doesn't really make sense, however, for him to build a workshop on top of his other work areas. I'll wrap up the digging and let you know what I find (or don't find!) I'll get some good photos of the clay layer, the test trenches, and other stuff up here soon. We've excavated all the way back through time to the first pottery work on this site, probably to 1859 or 1860. This is very exciting and the lab work promises to be very productive and exciting. I've promised to write about some other updates, including the feathers. I've exchanged a few emails with Stephanie Livingston, a former professor of mine. Dr. Livingston is a zooarchaeologist and has studied both birds and mammoths- covering both ends of the size scale in the animal kingdom! She offered helpful comments, cautionary thoughts, and ideas on how to answer my questions. First, she agrees with me that the feathers were buried "in the flesh" so to speak. The manner in which they all appeared to be lined up would require that the feathers still be held in place by skin when they were buried. Feather shafts do split naturally, and that probably explains the multiple splits along the shafts. She was uncertain about what effect harvesting vanes would have on the feathers. Stephanie told me, to my disappointment, that one can not easily determine species simply by studying the shaft fragments as one can with other bones. She suggested, however, that I could find a wildlife biologist willing to do some DNA testing to answer that question. We also talked about an experimental archaeology project that involved burying a set of bird wings after processing them in a few different ways to see if we could replicate the pattern. Just imagine- 1. find some birds that have met an untimely demise and donated their bodies to science. 2. process the birds' wings different ways- harvest some vanes while the feathers are still in the skin, but the skin has been removed from the bone, leave some on the bone completely, remove some from the skin, leave some with vanes intact, etc. 3. bury them in the desert. 4. dig them up and check on them every few years. I love my job! Anyway, I've not heard anything about the sulphur and wrought iron issue. I'll keep you posted when we hit the lab. Perhaps I can design and experiment to test this. At the least, I'll put the question to a room full of chemistry undergrads and see what they figure out. After all our difficult work, I've returned to a hostel in town near the dig site. While camping up Big Cottonwood was inexpensive, I've run almost completely out of steam due to our hectic work schedule during the project. I needed the extra energy produced by the extra half hour of sleep and the shower at the end of each day. I'm also much more eager to write for this blog after I've had a chance to wash up! I'm sure my colleagues and Chris also appreciate my improved hygiene! Stay Tuned! July 27th, 2005: Christopher Merritt (at 5:00 pm)Fascinating news! Remember
those animal remains we found last week that July 27th, 2005: Timothy Scarlett (at 7:00 pm)This job never ceases to amaze me. Just when you're feeling confident about something. The little spines I thought were feathers were from fish? Well, there you have it. The funny thing is that when I spoke to Chris and got the news, I said to him- "A trout or sucker? These things are huge. How big was the fish?" Chris told me that Paul Cowley had estimated them to have been at least three feet long. Now THAT is a serious trout. No joke. Stephanie Livingstone will get a chuckle out of this. I should have sent her more detailed photographs than those posted on this blog. Today was a good day, although we hit 103 F again. I finished up the excavation today, wrapping up the second test trench and also digging an extension of the excavation unit eastward between 2N0W and the fence. I wanted to see the top of the wall in plan so I could try and judge when and how it was built. I was able to resolve part of that question, but not all. A whole bunch of trees grew up on the other side of the fence and the wall was ridden with roots.
Test Trench 1 runs from the photo's top center toward the middle. The bottom of trench 1 is 2 meter's below datum, about five feet below ground level. Test Trench 2 runs East/West and connects from Test Trench 1 to the wall. The shovel test probe I dug with Kirk Henrichsen appears at the bottom of trench 1 near the right side. You should be able to see how we cut through the tile floor feature to study how it sat on the original ground surface. In the picture below, you can see the eastern extension from 2N0W.
I'll spend the next two days shooting photographs, finishing paperwork, and drawing profiles. Chris and I sorted some of our loaned equipment out and prepared to return shovels, screens, and tool boxes to the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, This Is The Place Heritage Park, and our friends. I've turned over most of the earthmoving gear, but held on to the photo equipment and drafting materials. I'll post the profile photos and some drawings if I can scan them. Perhaps later we can create a panorama of the excavation. Speaking of profiles, I've begun to take peels of the profile stratigraphy. Prehistoric archaeologists commonly use sediment peels to preserve a section of the layers in the sediment layers. Historic archaeologists don't use this technique as commonly. The process is surprisingly strait forward. One applies a consolidant, such as polyvinyl acetate glue (known to normal people as Elmer's Stick All) or Latex Natural Rubber, by a gentile spray. After the first few sprayed on coats have dried and set the surface of the sediment, more consolidant is applied with a brush, eventually often including a strong material to reinforce the consolidant- such as a board or fabric. There are two pictures of peels I found on the web to help readers visualize the final result: here and here. At Petersen's pottery site, I'm using latex rubber. The glues work well and when dried they are very strong, but the peel is stiff as a board. Archaeologists actually often go ahead and glue their peel directly to a board to protect it. The problem with this is that the board is often difficult to transport and then store. Our latex rubber will be soft and I'll be able to bend it. I'll add strips of fabric to the back to strengthen them, but I want to be able to roll each peel up and put them into a tube for transport. We'll loose a bit of strength in our bond (as well as some sediment in the tube!) but it will be worth it. The peels could be useful for analysis and for future exhibits. July 31st, 2005: Timothy ScarlettA This Is The Place Park staff member backfilled the site this morning with a bobcat. Another crew from the park will spread topsoil and lay sod on the site on Monday morning. This turned out to be an amazing dig and after three weeks of hard and intense work, I'm happy, sad, and relieved to fill in the units. I'm happy because it 22 consecutive days of very hard work and very long hours-- I'm ready for a break. I'm sad because we learned so much and enjoyed ourselves during the excavation. I'm relieved because the project moves now into the lab phase where we can work patiently over the next few months. You can see some of the final pictures here.
Jump back to week 1. Jump back to week 2.
Contact Details:Utah Pottery Project Timothy James Scarlett, Director Department of Social Sciences Michigan Technological University 1400 Townsend Ave Houghton, MI 49931 Phone: (906)487-2359 Fax: (906)487-2468 email: scarlett@mtu.edu |
AnnouncementsMedia resources and press releases will be available here. Speakers are available to make presentations to your organization about this project. Please contact Timothy Scarlett for more information.
Institutional Support:
Program in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology
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