jeff_patt_park

New conservator, Virginie Ternisien, comes to us on contract for a year from France where she recently graduated from Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University with a Masters Degree in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. During her studies, Virginie had internships to conserve artifacts from the Museum of Orsay and the Louvre. She has also been involved with conservation projects at the British Museum, the Clemson Conservation Center in South Carolina (home of the Hunley), and in Egypt and Albania. Virginie is currently pursuing a Doctoral Degree in conservation with a special interest in composite objects and, at the MAC Lab, she will be primarily responsible for treating artifacts from the Presidio La Bahia, a Spanish frontier fort located in Texas.


Using a scalpel to remove corrosion from a kettle found
at Presidio La Bahia.


Virginie

Conservators at the MAC Lab have completed treatment on wooden timbers from Fort Frederick in Albany, New York. Built in 1676 to protect Albany from Native Americans, Fort Frederick was originally comprised of two small buildings surrounded by a stockade. After the French and Indian War, the people of Albany salvaged much of the fort’s construction material and, during the Revolutionary War, what remained of the fort was used as a jail. The recently conserved timbers are the remains of part of the stockade that was left underground when the fort was dismantled in 1789. Conservation treatment included desalination, polyethylene glycol impregnation, and vacuum freeze drying.


Fort Frederisck in 1763.


Wrapped timbers await further packing next to the vacuum
freeze drier where they completed their treatment.


Soon to be on their way home to New York.

The MAC Lab staff is always busy researching and composing manuscripts for publication and, recently, several works have made their way into the public eye. Articles by MAC Lab Director, Patricia Samford, include “Giving Voice to a Silent Past: African American Archaeology in Coastal North Carolina” published in The Archaeology of North Carolina: Three Archaeological Symposia, “Naturalist, Explorer, and Town Father—John Lawson and Bath”, co-authored with Eva C. Latham, published in North Carolina Historical Review, and “Subfloor Pits” published in World of a Slave; Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States. Deputy Director Ed Chaney co-authored an article with Julie King entitled “Passing for Black in Seventeenth-Century Maryland”, published in Interpreting the Modern World: Transatlantic Perspectives. And Federal Curator Sara Rivers Cofield’s chapter, “French Refugees and Slave Abuse in Frederick County, Maryland: Jean Payen de Boisneuf and the Vincendiere Family at L’Hermitage Plantation”, was published in French Colonial Archaeology in the Southeast and Caribbean. Sara has also just submitted “A Guide to Spurs of the Mid-Atlantic Region ca. 1635-1820” to the journal, Northeast Historical Archaeology. Congratulations to our staff authors on their most recent publications!

Once again, we have added to the MAC Lab’s Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland web site – new information on three Post-Colonial ceramic types is available for your researching pleasure; white felspathic stonewares, alphabet wares, and Japanese Geisha Girl (!) porcelain. The Diagnostic Artifacts web site was created to assist professional archaeologists as well as the interested public to recognize significant types of artifacts found in Maryland. Check out Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland today!


White Felspathic Stoneware


Geisha Girl Porcelain

JPPM archaeologists continue to excavate a cellar within the kitchen area of the Smith’s St. Leonard site. They think that the small cellar (approximately 4’ x 5’ x 4’) was filled with debris sometime between 1748 and 1754 - and what debris it is! Along with the ivory-handled knife mentioned in the last cellar blog, artifacts discovered in the cellar include; a ceramic-handled knife, a bridle bit, dated window leads (!), a piece of lead with a grid scratched on it, buttons, cufflinks, fragments of tiny ceramic pots, and puffer fish bones. The archaeologists have excavated more than half of the cellar and hope to finish the remainder before the holidays.


Profile of cellar


Excavating iron broad hoe


A whole pewter spoon

Two screw-piles from the Drum Point Lighthouse have just arrived at the MAC Lab for conservation treatment. Screw-pile lighthouses were built on pilings that have been screwed into soft river or sea beds (the “screw-pile” is the piling itself with an auger, or drill bit, attached to the end). This type of construction allowed specifically for the yielding bed of the Chesapeake Bay, and screw-pile lighthouses became widespread in the Chesapeake region. Construction of the Drum Point Lighthouse began in 1883 and workers finished screwing the pilings into place in less than three days - the entire structure was completed in less than 19 days! The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1962 and it was moved from Drum Point, at the mouth of the Patuxent River, to the Calvert Marine Museum in 1975 where the admission fee for the museum includes a tour of the lighthouse. Drum Point Lighthouse is one of only three surviving Chesapeake Bay screw-pile lighthouses.


Conservators use the crane to bring the auger portion of
one of the screw-piles into the MAC Lab.


Drum Point Lighthouse in 1915.

Ongoing excavations at the Smith’s St. Leonard Site on JPPM property have uncovered a cellar feature in the north east section of the detached kitchen area of the Smith property. The cellar has yielded many interesting artifacts. One object, discovered just under the bricks that covered the feature, is a utensil handle that was originally thought to be bone, but has been identified as ivory. Some of the other artifacts from the feature include; bird bones, a pewter spoon bowl, a paving stone, a possible burnt log, and a horseshoe. Our investigation continues and we will bring you more from the site soon!


The kitchen hearth area – the cellar is located just beyond this photo, top right.


Archaeologist excavating the 1st quadrant of the cellar feature.


Ivory handle.

Recently, the MAC Lab hosted a workshop to help answer that very question. Archaeologists, educators, interpreters, and docents gathered to hear “Archaeology FAQ” with Ed Chaney, Deputy Director of the MAC Lab and “Putting it in Practice,” with JPPM educator Kim Popetz, before being treated to several small group sessions; “Colonial Bling” with Sara Rivers Cofield, MAC Lab Federal Curator, “The Meaning of Fun” with assistant professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Kenneth Cohen, and “A Cigar is just a Cigar...or is It? - Determining Meanings from Artifacts” with Patricia Samford, Director of the MAC Lab. Participants were invited to examine many interesting examples from the more than 8 million artifacts curated at the MAC Lab and to add to their knowledge of the Historical Chesapeake’s material culture.


Sara Rivers Cofield discussing “Colonial Bling”


Kenneth Cohen explores “The Meaning of Fun”

*This workshop was sponsored by Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum, Maryland Association of History Museums, Historic London Town and Gardens, Southern Maryland Museum Association, and the Archeological Society of Maryland.

**Many thanks to Rod Cofield, Director of Interpretation and Museum Programs at Historic London Town and Gardens, for coordinating this engaging workshop!

The latest addition to the MAC Lab’s Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland web site is an informative section on spurs. The Diagnostic Artifacts web site was created to assist professional archaeologists as well as the interested public to recognize significant types of artifacts found in Maryland. The information on spurs can be found in “Small Finds,” where the more miscellaneous of these types of artifacts, such as bodkins and smoker’s companions, are described in detail. Do you want to know what a bodkin is? Would you like information on religious artifacts? You’re in luck! Check out the information, diagrams, and illustrations at http://www.jefpat.org/diagnostic/Small%20Finds/index-Small%20Finds.htm


17th century spur


Jesuit ring that depicts the crucifixion


If you go to “Small Finds,” you’ll find out what this is!

Last week, (just in time for the creepiest of holidays), conservators x-rayed a collection from the Federal Reserve prior to the artifacts going into treatment. And TAKE A LOOK at what developed! What appeared to be a misshapen clump of concretion seems to be some kind of a spooky house. And it’s haunted too - check out the ghostly shape floating in the lower left window!

Is it a real x-ray? Yes, it is. It is a real x-ray of a real artifact excavated from a real site. Really.

Are we going to tell you what it is? No, because we don’t know yet!



Boo.