Safety First

As part of our training for the Crew Leaders of the field school, we usually conduct CPR and first aid training with the other NPS staff. We typically use the Red Cross. This is very useful to put the emphasis on safety and to help the staff (and me) to remember all of the potential sources of injury in the field. It is also a great way to start building a team.

This first day helps to guide our training of the students and ensure a safe working and learning environment for all of us. Also given the large numbers of visitors we have, first aid and CPR/AED in case of a visitor mishap is only prudent. Over the 12 years of the field school, the worst case has been exposure to poison oak. We are prepared though!

IPads for Fieldwork at Fort Vancouver

Last week we purchased 10 iPads with Retina displays, 16 gb with wifi for use by the students this summer. As we will have over 20 students this year, we will have to work in teams. This is typical of archaeological excavation where teams of two often conduct excavation. Usually one person excavates and conducts paperwork while one or more screeners collect artifacts and fill out bags. We have enough iPads for excavation of a test trench at the William Kaulehelehe house and the continuing excavations at the Little Prouxl house. Teams will also use iPads at the Old City Cemetery site where we will continue recording in the northwest quadrant (the Masonic quarter by fate). Other testing work using 30-cm round shovel probes (for subsurface survey) and 50x50-cm shovel tests (subsurface survey/testing) will use old fashioned paper forms. We will also have the students take old-fashioned field notes with paper and pencil. Photographs will include those taken by students with the iPads and "old fashioned" Nikon digital single-lens reflex cameras which will be used for feature and profile recording. I am perhaps the last person to give up black and white film but no BW film this year. We will just have to deal with digital archiving for the long term (see among others,  Kintigh and Altschul 2010).

For cases we are trying Griffin Technology military grade Survivor cases in a variety of colors (colors more a case of availability)

http://www.griffintechnology.com/survivor 

and Otterbox Defender series cases 

http://m.otterbox.com/defender-series/defender-series,default,pg.html

The weather is currently wet, typical of this time of year in the Pacific Northwest and we are expecting some moist conditions next week when we start. Should be a good way to test use under more muddy conditions. Later it will become dry and dusty.

We are also tweaking and testing the pdf forms. We will have the crew leaders test them on Thursday before finally loading them onto the iPads. Forms are a level form, feature form, and bag catalog. Lab Director Elaine Dorset is editing the level form mockup I made and translating them into the other forms. We have gone from a traditional 2 page form to a 4 page form with a more error proof sediment description form. The elevations will be less error prone too. I am putting together instructional materials for the students to go with the field manual that can live on the iPads. Being able to have access to digital instruction manuals and reference materials in the field should be quite novel. I wonder that it may be overwhelming given the nature of fieldwork although access to critical information in the field may improve decision-making during fieldwork. We will see.

Field School Lecture Series

Here is the announcement for our 2013 Speaker Series:

"Planes, Mills, Factories, and Forts: Exploring Technological Heritage in the 21st Century"

WHEN: June 27, July 11, July 18, July 25,August 1. All lectures take place at 7:00 PM.

WHERE: All talks will be held at the Tex Rankin Theater at Pearson Air Museum, located at 1115 E 5th Street, Vancouver, WA 98661

VANCOUVER, WA – Fort Vancouver National Historic Site’s 2013 Speaker Series, part of the annual Public Archaeology Field School, will bring together experts in the field of archaeology to address topics of technological heritage. Lectures in the series will discuss the preservation of aviation crash sites in National Parks, the Kaiser Shipyards, the Brimstone Hill Fortress on St. Kitts in the Caribbean, the underwater archaeology of the World War II Midway battlefield, and more.

Technological heritage is found at industrial and military sites, and forms an important part of many communities’ local identity and history. The preservation of technological heritage occurs in many forms, including museum objects and archives, antique and replica aircraft, ships and equipment, industrial structures, and archaeological sites. Together, these tell the story of industrial experiments and undertakings and the people and communities associated with them.

The lectures are open to the public and free of charge.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, including a full schedule, visit http://go.usa.gov/b2YF

Data Entry in the Lab

Volunteer Patty Tuller data enters lab analysis data from paper forms in the clean area of the Fur Store Archaeology Laboratory. While lap top computers have streamlined this step in some of our lab situations, the use of volunteers and the sometimes dusty conditions in the "dirty lab" makes direct digital recording using laptops difficult. After the field school, we hope to continue to use the weatherized IPads for routine collections labeling processes and direct analysis recording.

Field School Preparations

Just finished preparing a presentation for tomorrow's Western States SHPO (State Historic Preservation Conference) meeting, which is being held at the City of Vancouver's Artillery Barracks, part of the Vancouver National Historic Reserve (the affiliated area adjacent to the National Park Service's Fort Vancouver National Historic Site).  The lunchtime talk is will focus on our Public Archaeology field school and introduce the SHPOs and their staffs to our experiment with mobile recording technology.

A few weeks ago I tweaked our Level Record Form and marveled at its potential to reduce mathematical errors associated with elevations, make routine the use of standardized categories, and streamline data collection in the field.  I had hoped to use this with a little project associated with a single 1x1-m test unit, but the timing didn't quite work out.  A screen-shot of the first page of our form is shown -- I'll post the entire form once I have troubleshot it a bit more.

We had a large number of field school applications this year and it looks like it will be a big group.  Am still working out the public lecture series (although almost have it nailed down) and working through the many processes that we run through every year to coordinate between three big organizations -- two Universities and the National Park Service.  So many details . . .

Screen shot of the first page of the Level Record Form.

Cemetery Digital Data Entry Form -- Testing with The Historical Archaeology Class

The groups are finishing up using the new template to enter field data into digital format.  I am linking it to this blog along with the original recording assignment and some tips on data entry.  Most of the students have finished and only a few minor issues are emerging.  An obvious issue is how to translate hard-to-read forms.  This is common of all paper and pencil forms that are translated to digital.  Use of this form in the field will make this problem obsolete.  Another issue is hand-drawn figures on the paper and pencil forms.  We are simply recording that a figure was drawn in the digital form.  In the future, perhaps I will include a drawing platform for use in the field to augment the text-based form, much as the level form I plan to develop soon.  Stay tuned.

By the way, there was a lovely article by Alexis Madrigal in the Atlantic Monthly today on a very special artifact from the Fort Vancouver collections.  The story speaks for itself -- it is in the most humble artifacts that sometimes we find amazing connections!

Last, our web page for the Public Archaeology Field School at Fort Vancouver is live.  Applications are due no later than May 3.  Early notification deadline is April 5.  

Digital Cemetery Headstone Recording

“There is no better place to stand face-to-face with the past than in the old burying grounds . . .” 

James Deetz 1996

My Anthropology 355 class (Historical Archaeology and the Origins of the Modern Pacific Northwest) will help me to test the use of digital recording forms, compiling data from cemetery headstones previously recorded in Vancouver, Washington by the 2011 and 2012 field schools.  

Field school students recording gravestones at
the Old City Cemetery in Vancouver, Washington

The Old City Cemetery (45CL887) in Vancouver, Washington, represents one of the oldest cemeteries in the City.  It was established in July 1867, and is directly tied to Fort Vancouver though the Hudson’s Bay Company Cemetery (the first colonial cemetery in the City) and the U.S. Army Post Cemetery, the latter of  which allowed civilian burials to be interred in it until July 1, 1867. The Old City Cemetery contains many of the early historical figures of the City, like Ester Short, who filed the town plat for Vancouver, Washington;  Charles Slocum, a local businessman who helped to lay out Boise, Idaho; and even former Hudson’s Bay employees, like Joseph Petrain, the baker at Hudson’s Bay Company Fort Vancouver.  The headstones of the Old City Cemetery reflect the changing styles of the mid-19^th and early 20^th century.  The cemetery has been subject to recent vandalism, and the field school project is designed to collect baseline information on headstone condition while collecting data on the forms, decorations, and inscriptions of the headstones.

In the summers of 2011 and 2012, archaeological field school students from Portland State University and Washington State University Vancouver recorded headstones from the eastern half (southeast and northeast quadrants) of the cemetery.  The Clark County Geneological Society has been repairing some of the damaged headstones and has collected a prodigious amount of geneological information on the cemetery:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~waclacem/OldCity/oldcity.htm. Other groups have also taken an interest in preserving and protecting the cemetery, including Project Youth.

As part of the their assignment to explore patterns in cemetery headstones through time and across space, groups of students in my winter term class will use a new digital form to input data previously collected by the field school students on cemetery headstones.  Not only will this give them a feel for historical archaeology data collection, but also test the form for eventual use in the field.