Last-but-not-least Student Highlight! Robin Hardy

Robin is a student of the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse. This fall she will be entering her senior year in hopes of graduating in the Spring with a Bachelor's in Archaeology, minoring in Anthropology. She's originally from Minnesota and became part of our field school because she plans to go into Maritime archaeology and wanted to take part in both Maritime and Terrestrial experiences.

The time has come

Alas, all good things must come to an end. Such is the case with our 2010 Arcadia Mills Village field school. All in all, we had a terrific season! We finished three 2x2m (3.3 x 3.3 foot) units, and made significant progress on six more. In total, we moved enough dirt to equal the weight of a school bus! We're all very proud of how quickly our students learned and developed into proficient archaeological field techs. Any one of them would do well in a professional position.

Before I get into the events of our last week, I'd like to show you the results of some of the geophysical surveys done. Unfortunately, the raw GPR and Gradiometer results are quite complicated and need additional processing before they can be interpreted here. I will, however, present to you our soil resistivity results (below).

On the left, are last year's results, and on the right are this year's. The dark bands running in perpendicular lines align nicely with our previously suspected architectural features, and further suggest that there were a number of additional structures in and around the area where our Block 1 and Trench 1 are located. Future work will prove just what these variously resistive soils indicate.

The crew spent much of the last week rushing about, making final maps (left) and preparing for final pictures (right). All this tedious work is in an effort to document exactly how our units looked before we filled them back in. For some units (units 4, 5, and 6), this documentation will mark the final glimpses of what the units' whole picture looked like. Those three units are now completed and will not be uncovered next year. For the rest (units 3 and 12 in Block 1 and units 13, 14, 15, and 16 in Trench 1), these maps and photos will give next year's archaeologists an idea of what was discovered during the 2010 season before work in the 2011 season begins.

These two photos below show just how far we excavated in Block 1 this year. On the left is a shot of Block 1 taken 20 May 2010. On the right is the final picture of the Block taken on 22 July 2010.

It's remarkable how far we got! Well done, 2010 Arcadia Crew!

Finally, it was time for backfilling. We lined the unfinished units with gardener's filter cloth to protect and delineate the exposed surfaces, then filled in the units from our mountainous backdirt pile. Before filling in the finished units, we tossed 2009 and 2010 pennies into the sterile bottoms. This was to create a new terminus post quem. This is a Latin term used by archaeologists meaning "time after which." This will show future (possibly very distantly into the future) researchers that past archaeologists have disturbed those sediments, and anything found therein is likely of a very disturbed context.

And then it was finished. (Except for the months of labwork, of course...)

I'd like to thank our two crews of rotating maritime/combo students and our steadfast core of solid terrestrial students for being archaeological rockstars. I'd like to thank my awesome supervisors Tara Giuliano, Kad Henderson, and Andrew Christensen for their wonderful support. We also have to recognize the fine efforts of our fearless leader, Mr. John Phillips, and the overwhelming and obliging hospitality of the Arcadia Mill staff. This has been a wonderful and rewarding experience, and I'm glad I've been able to share it with you!

Thanks for reading!

Melissa Timo

Graduate Director-in-Training

Arcadia Mills Village 2010 Field School

Student Highlight! Bob Rutledge

Bob retired from a career in social services and continue to operate rental properties in his hometown of Bemidji, Minnesota. He has a BA from the University there. His training in chemistry and biology dovetailed nicely with his interests in the history of human evolution and cultural development. He's returned to school as a senior in anthropology. Bob plans to work toward a MA with a dual focus on maritime and terrestrial archaeology. He expects to spend his future traveling the world, from project to project, experiencing a wide range of cultures and environments along the way.

Student Hightlight! David Hodo

David retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1996 and the Little Rock, Arkansas Police Department in 1999. From 1999 until 2000, David visited and studied archaeology sites and institutions in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Europe. He became an online and on-campus student in the UWF Maritime Studies Program in August 2008. Last summer, David excavated in Bylazora, Macedonia with the Texas Foundation for Archaeology and Historical Research. He is currently in UWF Combined Maritime and Terrestrial Field Schools.

Student Highlight! Thomas Kirkland

Kirk left Auburn University School of Business in his sophomore year. He earned his six pack captain's license in 2006. He worked in the parasail industry in Panama City Beach as a captain until 2009. Kirk began attending University of West Florida in the fall of 2009 for a bachelors degree in Maritime Studies. He would like to go to graduate school at UWF for a masters in Historical Anthropology. After graduating Kirk would like to get a job with a government agency doing some sort of archaeological or coastal zone management job.

Like sand though the shaker screens, these are the days of our lives

Things have truly kicked into high gear on the site! We're down to six open units and a ton of dirt yet to move!

In our block (left), a number of complicated brick features in Units 3 and 12 have been recorded and removed at long last. This means that digging should proceed much more smoothly.

Also this week we said good-bye to the large metal plate that spanned the southern corners of Units 3 and 12. Unfortunately, after being exposed on and off for two field seasons, the plate's integrity did not hold. We managed to salvage and transport the pieces as intact as possible.

This, of course, did not mean that the archaeological fun stopped once the brick and metal plate were gone. Along the east wall of Unit 12 Salina Hebert and Melissa Timo discovered yet another sandstone block. This smaller block is at a different elevation than the others discovered. Does this mean that it's from another building? Another, later floor support? A victim of the building(s)'s destruction? Only time and future work will tell.

In the trench south of Block 1 (above, right), Kad Henderson and his students have reached the bottom of the tree fall disturbance. They now finding intact deposits that have produced a number of interesting artifacts, including writing slate pieces and our ninth pipebowl (below, left).

Unfortunately, our time is nearly up. Next week is our last week, and it will be filled with all those things that need to happen to put a site "to bed," so to speak. These will include extensive mapping and end of excavation photographs, inventorying and returning equipment, and backfilling the nearly 18 cubic meters (nearly 60 cubic feet!) of dirt we removed and screened this year into the excavated units to protect them until the next field season.

Stay tuned for the frenzy!

Student Highlight! Shane McDonald

Shane is majoring in Anthropology with a specialization in Archaeology. He graduated from Wewahitchka High in 2006. Although he has lived all over the US due to being from a military family, Wewa is where home is. Fall 2010 begins his senior year at UWF, and his future aspirations are high. Vote for him as presidential candidate in 2024!

Picking up the pace

As we headed into this past week, it was with the knowledge that time is slipping away! We still have a lot to finish before the end.

In Unit 12, student Salina Hebert and director in training Melissa Timo excavated a proposed dripline. The trench-like feature only contained larger-sized objects like whole oyster shell, bowl bases, free-blown bottle base (right), and this large fragment of a plate with a printed pattern Salina is modelling (left). If this feature is in fact a dripline, these artifact make sense. Water passing through the dripline wouldn't be able to wash away such heavy artifacts.

In other news, we've finished another unit! In order to deem a unit "finished," archaeologists must determine that they have reached the end of cultural deposits. To be sure, UWF archaeologists will excavate two more 10 cm levels down. Eariler Euro-American, or even Native American, deposits can sometimes lie beneath predicted cultural remains, unbeknownst to even the most well-researched archaeologist!

Because the construction or occupation midden features ran deep in Unit 6, excavators couldn't call it quits for a full meter (3.3 feet)! Below is a picture of Tara Giuliano, supervisor of the students working in Unit 6. At 5'2," Tara had to improve her vertical jump just to get out!

Finally, on Thursday we completed our last bit of geophysical survey. This time Sarah Mitchell was back with the ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment. Unlike x-ray, the GPR sends radar a meter into the ground, which reflects back and reveals disturbances underground. In addition to archaeologists, this machinery is commonly used by utilities workers. See the video below for how a GPR runs. The machine must be kept level and flat on the ground, which was difficult to do with the ruts and stumps on the site.

Student Highlight! Meagan Rea

Meagan Rea is a Senior in the Archaeology department at the University of West Florida. She is interested in historical archaeology with a focus in African American archaeology. She is hoping to continue on the graduate school and eventually completing her Doctorate.

Student Highlight! Jeanette Scadlock

Jeanette is a senior at the University of Central Florida majoring in Anthropology, with a minor in Film. Her ambitions as an archaeologist are to study piracy in China during the Ming dynasty in the South China Sea or during the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean. She would also like to study the historical archaeology of the Eastern Asian or the Polynesian Island nations. Jeanette's goal is to be scuba certified within the next five years. Outside of archaeology, she loves to read adventure and crime novels and has spent the last three years working on a television show pilot.

Crossing the line

This year the students taking UWF's terrestrial field schools got a great opportunity to see the different techniques and research designs employed at both of the terrestrial field schools.

On Thursday the crew from Molino, as well as P.I.s Dr. John Worth and Ms. Norma Harris came to Arcadia. On the right, you can see Arcadia Principle Investigator, Mr. John Phillips, explaining the water-powered milling done at the Arcadia Mill industrial complex during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Below, Ms. Harris and UWF grad student Linda Suzanne Borgen ponder our block, while the Arcadia and Molino crews swap tales and catch up.

On Friday morning, the Arcadia crew headed out to Molino. The Pensacola Colonial Frontiers field school is examining the remains of the Spanish Mission San Joseph de Escambe along the Escambia River, near Molino, Florida. This site not only includes evidence from the 18th Century Spanish and Apalachee Native American populations, but the previous. prehistoric residents as well.

The Arcadia students got to see how these student archaeologists employed a number of new techniques to study a considerably different data set. On the left, you can see Arcadia students checking out prehistoric stone tools and Native American ceramics.

The Molino crew's site has a complicated occupation. The graduate student supervisors explained how they had attempted to tease apart and isolate a number of overlapping buildings.

After showing us the uncovered mission components- including a soldiers' barracks, a possible well, and Mission-period and prehistoric-period Native American dwellings -Dr. Worth took the crew to the Escamia River to explain its importance for the mission, as well as for later nineteenth-century milling ventures. Unlike Arcadia's mills, the only evidence for the late 19th century mill dynamited at the Molino site in the 1930's is a bevy of discarded Gonzales-manufactured bricks and the large, granite blocks used to mount the mill's steam engines.

We are quite grateful to Dr. Worth, Ms. Harris and the supervisors and crew of the Molino crew for hosting us. It was great to see all the hard work they've completed this summer and we hope they learned a little about archaeology from us!

Here, Molino supervisor Danielle Dadiego attempts to explain the complicated series of architectural and occupation features she and her crew uncovered in this trench.

That's all for now. Hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing Fourth of July Weekend!

Student Highlight! Becky Jadallah

Becky is a returning student with a previous B.A. from UWF in Education. She is presently a senior seeking a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and is looking forward to beginning her Anthropology M.A. at UWF. She is interested in artifact preservation, historical archaeology, and prehistoric archaeology. She is excited to be part of the UWF 2010 Arcadia Mill Village Terrestrial Field School.

Alex Attacks!

Unfortunately, Hurricane Alex in the Gulf had us ducking for cover all week long! Luckily for us, the rain stayed away just long enough for us to make some new discoveries and open a new trench. Right is one of the many bricks found in Unit 12- this one had a Bonifay maker's mark stamped into its surface.

While finishing a level in Unit 12 and preparing Unit 3 for excavation, we noticed a new feature. In this picture below, notice the light colored line along the far right in the right hand unit. After conferring with our P.I., John Phillips, we believe that we might have a dripline! A dripline is made when water runs off a gutter-less roof and washes light-weight sediments away. This process leaves a coarse, pebbly line that differs considerably from the sediments outside of it. Finding a dripline helps us identify the orientation, and perhaps even the roofline style of the building (or buildings) we're studying!

Colors have been enhanced so that the dripline is more easily discernible.

Finally, on Wednesday and Thursday we worked on opening our first Trench (left). Trench 1 consists of four adjacent 1 meter by 1 meter units several meters south of Block 1. This trench bisects a large, very artifact rich tree fall. Although the top several levels will be highly disturbed because of said tree fall, we hope to find intact midden (or garbage dump). Nothing tells more about people from the past than the things they threw away!

We've already recovered diagnostic ceramics and a piece of writing slate. We're excited to see what lies under the treefall!

Student Highlight! Salina Hebert

Salina is an undergraduate student at UWF majoring in archaeology. She has been interested in archaeology since a very young age. She is interested in prehistoric southeastern archaeology. Salina plans on pursuing a master's degree and eventually getting a doctorate in archaeology.

Holy Productivity!

Yesterday, our resident geophysical expert, UWF graduate student Sarah Mitchell, was back out at Arcadia. She had previously come out a month ago to run the resistivity machine through our site. While the findings were indeed interesting, Sarah and our Principle Investigator, John Phillips thought that giving UWF's other geophysical equipment a shot would give us a clearer picture of the archaeological materials beneath our feet. It's also a fantastic opportunity for students to be exposed to high tech archaeological methodologies that they may not have a chance to use in the regular Cultural Resource Management world.

This time, Sarah brought out the gradiometer- a machine that creates an artificial magnetic field in order to measure the interaction of environmental electrostatic fields and gradients in a tested area. On the left, Sarah quickly walks the gradiometer along our established grid in order to obtain the most scientifically regulated results. If you notice, Sarah is wearing track pants and a simple cotton t-shirt. Although this is not standard field wear, there is an important reason for such an outfit! Any metal- from big things like cars and powerlines to little things like grommets, zippers, and steel toed boots can skew or ruin the gradiometer's readings. Nevertheless, most of our well-equipped crew had to watch this survey from deep behind the treeline!

We eagerly await the results!

Sarah will return next week to complete the gradiometer survey, as well as preform a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey of an architecture feature-rich portion of our Area A.

Today was also a productive day. We completed a number of exploratory shovel tests in Area A in our search for additional architectural features. Also, in our newest open unit 12, students working there uncovered a number of interesting finds! On the right, student Shane McDonald holds our first whole bottle! It's a pharmaceutical bottle with a hand applied lip and pontil mark on the base. The bottle is embossed with the name for a hair restorer and skin tonic dating back to the 1860's. These patent medicines (also known as 'snake oil') usually did more harm than good with ingredients like alcohol and cocaine, but were very popular throughout the nineteenth-century as Americans became more trusting of the scientific pursuits of the medical field.

In addition to the whole bottle, students in the same unit found a nearly whole pipebowl (left). This marks our seventh pipebowl of the season, each with a unique design. It's certainly becoming clear how the people who lived on the site spent their free time!

Student Highlight! Trey Ropelis

Trey is an undergraduate senior majoring in General Anthropology. He has lived all over the U.S., but has spent most of his life in Idaho. He came to UWF with no clue of what he'd be majoring in, but after one intro to anthropology course with Dr. Spradley, he was hooked. This is his final semester before he graduates and he hopes to find a job in the National Park Service after he's done with field school.

Switch!

This week marks the beginning of the second half of the summer field season. This means a lineup change! Last week was the end of Amanda, Capri, Eric, Peter, and Lynne's terrestrial field school and the beginning of their maritime. They all have developed into excellent terrestial archaeologists and good friends and we'll miss having them around the site.

On the right, student Eric Bezemek shovel shaves around architectural features in Unit 6.

By the end of last week and the beginning of this, these departing students were able to wrap up any loose ties for the units and features they've been working on. So far they were able to help the Arcadia field school finish two and a half units, open a new (and very productive) unit, complete sixteen features, nine shovel tests, and recover several hundred bags of artifacts!

On the left, students Amanda Dahlberg and Shane McDonald finish the wall profiles after the completion of Unit 4.

On Friday and this past Monday, students worked on a number of shovel tests north of our current Block 1 in Area A. These shovel tests were set to explore the area for additional architectural sandstone or brick features. Students uncovered two new cut sandstone blocks that have served to deepen the mystery of the nature of our structure. Is it only one large building? Several small, adjacent buildings? On small building with a number of additions? Further analysis of the features and artifacts discovered (and lots more work to be completed) will help us pinpoint the truth!

We've had an outstanding first half! We're so proud of our students and how they've advanced their knowledge and practice of archaeological techniques. We've both answered and generated a ton of interesting questions about the inhabitant of this structure (or structures!). Only time will tell what the second half will bring.

And lastly, on Monday, the last day for the Arcadia first half combo students, the crew decided to celebrate by jumping in Pond Creek to cool off! Definitely a well-deserved reward at the end of a long, hot five weeks.

Student Highlight! Amanda Dahlberg

Amanda Dahlberg is a senior at UWF pursuing a degree in archaeology with a minor in maritime studies. She is originally from Sarasota, FL and came to UWF to participate in the maritime archaeology program. After she is finished with her time here at Arcadia she will be embarking on the maritime field school for 5 weeks, she can't wait to learn more archaeology skills while SCUBA diving!