-Stephanie
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| Julia with a great find - a copper bead from Pig Point |
My story with the Lost Towns Project starts with the small
country deli up the street from Pig Point. If you have been to the site you may
have had lunch there, which could possibly have been crafted by me! When I
started at the deli last summer I told my boss how I just recently declared my
undergrad Anthropology major, which was then followed up by the “What’s that?”
question I get so frequently. As I was delving into the four subfields of
Anthropology, archaeology came up as a topic and they briefly informed me of
the dirty gang of people who show up every Tuesday and Friday for lunch ready
to be fed. And just like they told me they would, the Anne Arundel County archaeologists showed up for lunch my first Friday shift. I didn’t know much
about the Pig Point site at the time, but I was soon informed that the site was
on family friend, Lisa and William Brown’s property. I had already gotten an
internship and a job for that summer so I wasn’t able to get out to the site,
but I anxiously waited for this summer to come around. So, the first week I was
back from school this summer, I got in touch with the Browns and the Lost Towns Project volunteer coordinator, Jasmine, who directed me to the site that next Friday.
Fortunately, my time with the project didn’t end with volunteering that day.
Lost Towns has a rolling internship application and thanks to internship
coordinator, Stephanie, I was able to concentrate my time into a wonderfully
educational internship for the summer.
This was my first excavation field work experience and if I
was to write all the things that I have learned over the past couple months, I
don’t know if you’d ever leave this page. Having such a hands on experience in
the field has allowed me not only to ask questions, learns skills and
techniques, but to PRACTICE! All the troweling, feature excavating, plan view
and profile mapping could not be taught only in a classroom. It takes getting
out in the field and being exposed to all areas of archaeology more than once
to get the practice to better skills and further knowledge and understanding of
the site and archaeology as a whole.
Some things I didn’t expect to learn from my time in the
field:
- Bags. Never have I seen so many plastic Ziploc bags in one
concentrated area (but only because I’ve never been to a landfill). There are
artifact BAGS, and BAGS for the artifact tags, and more BAGS depending on how
the soil is screened and what is being found. There is a lot of plastic
involved, but they are necessary to the process and I have noticed and
participated in a significant amount of bag reusing and recycling which makes
it more tolerable.
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| Many, many buckets of dirt from Pig Point units |
- I saved money on a gym membership! Just imagine the workout
you can get from working outside in the sun all day long, hauling buckets of
dirt back and forth, lifting and dumping buckets, shoveling piles of dirt out
AND back into the units...it’s exhausting! But it sure does make it feel worthwhile
being so active and involved in a fascinating project.
- Lab work. I wasn’t too sure about lab work when I first
started, simply because I love being outside and it was hard to fathom sitting indoors
when we could be elbows-deep in a unit somewhere. But, I must say that I have
enjoyed my time in the lab a lot! It’s really exciting to see the artifacts
found in the field and then washing, rebagging and labeling them and knowing
exactly where they were found on site and remembering what I learned that day
about them.
- Short cleanup time. I love love love that everything stays
relatively dusty and dirty. It makes cleanup so much faster! Which means more
time spent in the field. I have learned something about myself by working at a
restaurant and at the dig site simultaneously. I dislike excessive cleaning.
Unlike a the deli, I don’t have to wash and sterilize every piece of equipment
I use because it is most likely going to get even dirtier the next day.
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| The beautiful Patuxent River marsh in summer |
- My favorite and what I least expected was learning so much
about the place where I grew up. There is an incredible amount of history,
knowledge, and mystery that goes along with the Pig Point site and the area
that surrounds it. One of the coolest things for me is the realization that the
Native people who lived here thousands of years ago utilized the Patuxent River
And now, it being the end of my internship, I just want to
thank all the staff members of the project, all the interns and volunteers I
met, and the Browns for all they have taken the time to teach me throughout
this summer. Hope to be back soon!!
