Hello. My name is Meaghan, and I work at Jamestown Rediscovery.
I'm here with an episode of the "Dig Deeper" series,
where I'm going to tell you about the work I do
processing artifacts that come from archaeological excavations at Jamestown.
So far in the "Dig Deeper" series, you've learned more
about the intricacies of archaeological analysis.
In this episode, we'll explore how artifacts fit into that process.
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Imagine a summer day on Jamestown Island.
An archaeologist crouched in a 10 by 10 square foot test unit
wipes the sweat off their brow as they carefully trowel away
the soil from a 17th-century artifact.
The air brims with excitement, and people surrounding the test unit buzz with questions.
What could it be? Where did it come from? Who put this there?
But how do we get the answers to these questions?
And what happens to an artifact after an archaeologist puts it in a plastic vial and sends it away?
That's where people like me come in.
My name is Meaghan, and in this video update,
I'll be telling you about the cataloging process at Jamestown,
and I'll explain to you how my work has changed during this period of shelter-in-place.
I ensure that artifacts go through proper processing within our collections facility.
This means that I identify artifacts, I catalog them in a database,
I store them according to archival methods,
and finally, I analyze them to gain new insights about the past.
After artifacts come into the collections facility,
they are washed, dried, and then sorted by artifact type.
I then work my way through each context in the order from which they were dug.
Within each context, I need to follow a specific hierarchy
to make sure that in the future,
researchers can easily access artifacts within the collection.
The hierarchy begins with my favorite artifact type: ceramics.
Within the index that I work, there are 228 possibilities for ceramic ware type,
so it can take a while to figure out which one of the 228
that the tiny sherds I'm working with are.
I could be dealing with anything from a sherd of North Devon coarseware
from the 17th century in England to a sherd of Portuguese faience,
Chinese porcelain, locally-produced redware, Dutch Delft,
or more modern ware types like 20th-century whiteware.
I look very carefully at these ceramics, analyzing them for qualities
like their color, texture, inclusions, decorations,
and then I determine which one of the 228 that it could be.
I give each ceramic its own unique identifier.
I have them labeled with indelible-quality ink and B-72 lacquer,
and then I store them according to archival-quality methods.
I repeat this process for the other artifact types within each context.
After ceramics, I move on to glass artifacts, then metals, stones,
food remains and animal bone artifacts, and then Native American artifacts.
Not all artifacts will follow the same process as the ceramics.
Not all of them will be directly labeled, and some will require different storage decisions.
Part of my job is making the decisions about things like storage
to ensure that artifacts are properly processed.
All of this artifact processing has the end goal not only of clear, careful storage
in archival-quality materials-- so, their physical status--
but also, this processing has the goal
of clear, careful storage within an organized database.
I have to make sure that the database follows certain rules.
And I have to think of each artifact as a data point that can potentially be analyzed.
So I have to make sure that I input all data without error.
That's what my work from home lately has been focused on.
I have been going back through the database, looking at the entries that I've put in,
refining them, and making sure that they adhere to a consistent format.
Catalog entries have begun to sort of pile up over the past few months
as I've been trying to get things cataloged, so having this time
to step away from that and look at what I've done
has been very valuable and will continue to be valuable
to the project I'm working on in the long run.
Having this opportunity to view the artifacts as data
has provided me with new insights about the artifacts.
These past few weeks working from home,
as I've been refining these database entries, I've been summarizing them as well.
So I've been trying to do things like say,
I have X number of Y type of ceramics within the collection.
With this summarized data, I'm able to provide new data points.
These past few weeks, I have been focusing on ceramics,
and I have been able to provide percentages to explain
where ceramics come from at the site, where they were originally produced.
This information has helped me to understand the trade markets
that colonial consumers were participating in,
and this information has helped me to build
a sort of consumer profile of the inhabitants of the site.
I've also been able to plot ceramic data points chronologically, even,
to try and give an estimate of when the site had higher and lower periods of occupation.
The next few weeks, I'll work on tobacco pipes.
I will analyze tobacco pipe stems using a few different formulae
to estimate when the site I am working with was in use.
Essentially, I'm using mathematics to ask questions about history.
The information that this sort of collections-based research can provide
can be very valuable to understanding archaeological excavations,
and it's a behind-the-scenes of archaeology at Jamestown
that you might not see while visiting the site.
So I hope that you enjoyed learning a little bit more
about the behind-the-scenes of archaeology at Jamestown.
I hope that you're staying safe and well in these times.
And I hope that you stay curious and learning about the past.
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