Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Today I catalogued a few Object ID's into Past Perfect. I am working on archiving a rather difficult box. All of my archaeological artifacts in Unit 63 shelf C box 2 are supposed to belong to a collection donated by Bunnie Hall, a local self-proclaimed amateur archaeologist. None of his artifacts are documented or given any provenience, which is an ethics nightmare in itself. In addition, some items in the box do not actually belong to the Bunnie Hall collection at all, making my inventory process a long and difficult one. Anyway, today I catalogued a few bags of Hall's pottery sherds (each bag contained around 60 sherds). After pottery, I moved to one of the mystery bags, and organized and identified some local stone projectile points. It was very interesting learning about the different points that are ancient and native to Northeast Florida. Plus, it gives me a working knowledge for some of the research I am doing for the upcoming Northeast Florida Native American Exhibit coming to MOSH in the fall.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Today I took a break from inventorying. I am researching the periods, locations, and cultures of seven specific archaeological sites that will be featured in an upcoming exhibit. Currently, I am researching the first two sites and time periods. The first, the Mount Taylor Period (pre-ceramic, Middle Archaic, c.a. 5000 B.C.) has two shell middens of focus, Oxeye Midden (located in the National Park Service's Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve) and Spencer's Midden (located on private property near Atlantic Beach). I have been researching shell middens/mounds, the time period, the Mount Taylor culture, and the specific middens themselves. During my walk-through of the exhibits in the beginning of my shift, I spent some extra time in the "Currents of Time" exhibit here at MOSH, which describes the history of Northeast Florida from pre-contact Timucua Native Americans to the 1960's. I spent some time reading through the first parts of the exhibit, since some of the information overlaps with what I am researching. It was pretty cool to know that some of my preliminary research and artifacts that I am cataloguing may reach many people come next fall. I really like the idea that my research and interests can reach the general public, not just academia. Through public history, maybe less people will ask me about dinosaurs when I tell them that I am an archaeology student!
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Today I went back to inventory. I spent my shift cataloguing more projectile points and organizing the mystery artifacts. I spent time looking up Floridian projectile points in a book, and found that many of them are not actually local artifacts at all. In short, today was a Past Perfect archiving day, and I am getting very used to using the program since I am cataloguing so many difficult objects. This week was a good week, and I am really enjoying my collections internship so far!
