News

by M. Jay Stottman

It is the oldest and most basic form of public archaeology, but we tend to pay little attention to how archaeologists speak to the public.   Whether it is giving a public presentation or telling someone about your dig, talking to the public is not something that we are trained for.  It is something that each archaeologist typically learns through experience and lots of trial and error.  When we do seek out training in the art of public speaking, we might take a workshop with professional interpreters.  While the techniques we learn help us more effectively communicate our message, we don’t often connect with the public.  Is it good enough to just tell people what we are doing, how we do it, and how important that it is?  Is there more than just answering the questions people ask and delivering our research and ethics messages?  We all have our spiel that we give and canned responses prepared for the inevitable questions we are asked.  Can we go beyond that and use them as opportunities to learn about our publics and as entry points to connect with them? 

            In order to connect with the public we have to do more than improve our strategies and techniques, we have to also think about our approach.  We have to move beyond just being information providers to being facilitators of conversations.  The key is to find points of entry or intersections in the information we present with the questions the public asks.   Learning what the public wants to know about and what they are interested in should help dictate what to talk about and how far the conversation can go.  Some may call them teachable moments, I call them teaching opportunities; either way, I am looking to make the people I talk to more invested in our interaction.  For example, I used a question in response to my spiel on outbuildings to learn that someone is interested in what happened to the buildings.  The conversation then can go from talking about how we know about the outbuildings to how changes in transportation changed the outbuilding landscape and how it affects change in the present.  Questions like, “what is the most important or valuable artifact you have found?” can lead to a conversation about how enslaved African Americans coped with slavery and actively created a community in the oppressive environment of slavery.  We can then inform and challenge our publics to connect such information to present day issues of social justice if we are seeking opportunities to do so. 

            We have to go beyond talking to the public and start communicating with the public in order to have a more meaningful interaction with them.  Rather than beating them over the head with our rhetoric, we should be facilitating conversations and connections with the public.  We have to think about our interactions with the public as a two-way street and seek those opportunities to share knowledge with each other.  Being a good communicator means we have to be able to listen as well as talk.  Certainly many of us have learned to do this and learned it the hard way, but communication goes beyond technique and strategies. It starts with how we conceptualize our relationship with the public.  Are we willing to give up some of our control as the expert to engage in more meaningful public interactions or should we even have to?

Lori Stahlgren discusses ideas about an artifact with kids during a field trip at Riverside, The Farnsley-Moremen Landing.

SHA Member Sarah Miller visits Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL)

On June 24 and 25, the Society for Historical Archaeology visited several members of Congress and their staffers to urge them to support reauthorization of the Historic Preservation Fund. President Joe Joseph, President-Elect Mark Warner, and member Sarah Miller made approximately 10 visits to the House and Senate. They also met with the Bureau of Land Management to discuss new planning guidance, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the National Park Service to discuss SHA’s development of an initiative to identify, preserve, and protect historic African-American burial grounds. These visits are critical to developing relationships and advancing SHA’s priorities in Washington.

By Sarah Johnson

Archaeology in a densely populated urban environment is an entirely different animal from doing some quiet shovel test pits in the woods. Throw in the element of working along a main tourist thoroughfare that attracts millions of visitors each year, and you’ve got yourself a real logistical challenge. How do we as archaeologists engage that volume of visitors while maintaining a safe, well-paced work environment? What follows are some of my thoughts on these issues, based on my experience on urban archaeology projects along Boston’s Freedom Trail, at the home of Malcolm X in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and on Burial Hill in Plymouth.

The first and most important rule of urban public archaeology, as with Boy Scouts, is to be prepared. Really think through your strategy beforehand and keep in mind that there will be challenges that you might not be used to facing.

• Safety: If you are in a setting where visitors will be able to walk right up to your excavation units, how will you keep them (and your crew) safe? Some sort of barrier may be in order, but also keep in mind that anything that keeps people from being able to see what you’re doing will be a turn-off. In my experience, a row of traffic cones usually does the job. Also consider how you’ll protect the site at night. Sand bags filled with backdirt are a great asset to have – you can use them to hold down the plywood or whatever else you use to cover your units, and you can also use them to line the bottom of your units to deter anyone who manages to get your covering off.

• Interpretation: If your crew is large enough, it helps to have people whose job it is to just interpret the site for visitors. This allows excavation to continue more or less unimpeded while also insuring that the public is engaged. In any crew, there will likely be a few people who really take to this role, saving those who are less outgoing from anything they find unpleasant. At the start of the project, lay out some talking points that you want the interpreters to be sure to hit and then let people find their own voice. You will find that you get the same few questions over and over again (“Have you found anything yet?” “What’s the coolest thing you’ve found so far?” “Found any gold?”), so it won’t be long before you start to hit your stride.  If possible, set up your screens in a space where the public can watch. That way, they can see the entirety of the fieldwork process at once. You can even take it one step further by setting up a public lab space. This is obviously not feasible for many projects, but it can be a really great way to highlight the scientific nature of archaeology and give visitors a sense of the true scope of our work, not just the digging. For the project I worked on in Plymouth, we set up a lab in the visitors’ center at Plimoth Plantation where members of the crew could wash and sort artifacts from the field and talk with visitors. Even just a small washing station on site can go a long way to expanding people’s ideas of what archaeology is.

• Follow-up: How will you continue to engage your visitors after they leave the site? The turnaround on urban public digs can be very fast, as people stop by for a few minutes as part of a tour or while they’re on the way to their next planned stop. It’s important to make a connection in the few moments you have and give them a way to continue to follow your work. Signage is a big part of this, so you should create some bright, eye-catching signs to place around the site that give a brief idea of who you are and what you are doing. That way, even if the visitor doesn’t get a chance to talk with anyone, they still have an idea of what they’re looking at. Going back to Joe Bagley’s blog post earlier this month, social media is a great way to engage people beyond the site itself. Prominently display your Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc. links on your signs, and include any hashtags that you’ve come up with for your project. The hashtag encourages people to not only follow along but also post about their experiences at the site in a way that others can find. Make sure that you post about your progress often so that there is some encouragement to keep following.

Above all, be flexible and maintain a sense of humor. Public archaeology on this scale can be overwhelming and exhausting, but it is also incredibly rewarding. You have the opportunity to bring your work to literally millions of people, and with just a little effort and planning on your part, you can leave them with an unforgettable experience. What message do you want to tell the world about archaeology? This is your chance to share it. Good luck and have fun!

By Linda Stone, SHA Board Liaison to the Development Committee

SHA is asking at least 50% of our regular members (students and others are welcome to join if they can) to donate at least $50 in celebration of the Society’s 50^th anniversary this year. The funds raised will be divided between two programs that are not funded as part of the regular budget. These are the Diversity Initiative and the Student Endowment. 

The Diversity Initiative is an exciting new set of endeavors to be more inclusive and proactive around a myriad of issues related to diversity. The efforts will be focused on specific activities and the times we live in. The Diversity Initiative provides access to our conferences via the Harriet Tubman Student Travel Award. Additionally, the Initiative has begun an effort to ensure identification and preservation of abandoned cemetery sites, prompted by several high profile African American historic cemetery excavations in the recent past.

One other current aspect of the Diversity Initiative is the anti-racism workshops that have been offered at the last two annual conferences. The committee has successfully raised funds to cover the costs of the past workshops which have used a paid outside facilitator. But wouldn’t it be better if the SHA could fund future workshops from an endowed pool of money and not require the committee to take on the additional task of fund raising on an annual basis? I think so. One could argue that imposing that additional requirement on the committee organizing the workshops is in of itself is an exertion of power over them and one of the institutional expressions of racism that the workshops strive to open our eyes to. I attended the workshop at Washington, DC conference last January and found it had a lasting impact. In the months since, when I observe institutional racism, as we all do, I try to imagine concrete steps that could be taken to overcome it. In cases where I have the opportunity to make suggestions, I feel it’s my responsibility to do so. Now, did I need the SHA anti-racism workshop be able to do these things? Perhaps not, but I certainly feel the workshop created a level of comfort I didn’t always have with the language and dialogues that are necessary to break down racism’s barriers.

The Student Endowment Fund was created in 2007 to fund the Ed and Judy Jelks Student Travel Award, the Quebec City Award/Bourse de Québec, the Dissertation Prize, and the Student Paper Prize. To date, the Endowment has approximately $33,000. The 50 for 50 campaign will help the Endowment to maintain its viability and ensure these awards and prizes will be available in the years to come to help our next generation of archaeologists advance their careers.

I was compelled to write this blog to encourage you to think about what a difference one small $50 donation can make if half of our close to 1000 regular members contributed. It would certainly help to create a pool of money that can be used to address diversity issues, increase diversity within our Society and perpetuate our profession via the Student Endowment Fund. Our strength is in the numbers. Finally, in addition to the satisfaction you’ll have knowing that you participated in 50 for 50, SHA is creating a commemorative pin for donors that can proudly be worn at the Fort Worth conference, or anytime you want to express your participation in this important fund raising effort.

Please click here or go to sha.org/donate to contribute.

by Eden Burgess

A bill that exempts Georgia Department of Transportation projects that cost up to $100 million from the Georgia Environmental Policy Act (GEPA), has been signed into law, despite strong opposition from archaeologists and tribal interests. Governor Nathan Deal signed the bill into law on April 26; it goes into effect on July 1, 2016 (SB 346; Act 339). Georgia’s archaeological community, led by the Georgia Council of Professional Archaeologists and the Society for Georgia Archaeology, however, were successful in amending the bill to remove cultural resources from the exemption.

In 2015, the Georgia Legislature passed a 10-year, $10 billion transportation funding bill. This new bill allows the state to fund major construction initiatives strictly with state funding, removing the need for federal support. State funded projects must comply with GEPA, which insures that state agencies take environmental effects into account during government undertakings. In order to lessen the environmental review on state funded projects, the Legislature passed SB347 exempting projects costing less than $100 million from the GEPA process. The Georgia archaeological community’s ability to amend the final bill to exclude cultural resources from the GEPA exemption is a great accomplishment that the SHA supported. But, the lessening of state environmental review is a concern, as is the movement to shift new transportation construction to state funding while using federal funds for maintenance and other non-ground disturbing work.

SHA is concerned that the Georgia bill may be the start of a national trend. Several states have increased transportation funding by raising local gas taxes and registration fees, and through other funding mechanisms. Consequently, states may be able to advance stalled transportation projects by using state-only funds, thus avoiding compliance with federal requirements in most cases. Instead, the legal protections for historic and archaeological sites affected by state-funded projects will be limited to state laws, such as Georgia’s GEPA and state versions of the National Historic Preservation Act. As the Georgia situation demonstrates, legislators that have passed gas tax and fee increases are anxious to see construction underway, and are willing to bypass state-level environmental and historic preservation reviews to make that happen.

The SHA Governmental Affairs Committee will be monitoring states considering the passage of laws similar to Georgia’s, and urges SHA members to notify Terry Klein or Marion Werkheiser with any information on these types of efforts in their states.

Kevin Gidusko, Florida Public Archaeology Network

Image 1 The FPAN drone, Boas I, gets ready for flight. Photo credit: Kevin Gidusko

At some point in the near future you or someone you know is going to want to get a drone and use it somehow, someway in whatever research or outreach you are conducting. Perhaps this thought has already crossed your mind. For the most part I think this is an amazing idea, but not without its own set of serious issues to consider first. Drones, more properly referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are rapidly changing the ways in which we collect data at archaeological sites, and offer us fantastic new ways to visualize that data. Those visualizations, those flashy aerials and three-dimensional models that drones help us to produce, are what inevitably intrigues the public; not to mention the hint of science fiction futurism that still clings to drones. Those of us working in public outreach are keen to take advantage of these shifts in public interest and so it is inevitable that some of us will want to procure a drone to use in outreach efforts. However, drones have also been a hot-button issue these last several years. Issues of privacy and public safety intermittently make the global media circuit, often doing a better job of spreading how best not to use a drone rather than discussing how they are being put to use by a bevy of well-meaning enthusiasts and scientists. It is imperative we demonstrate best practices to the public so that we can assist in bolstering the positive public image of these powerful tools. The first, best thing you can do when using a drone is to stay informed about the topic!

It should be noted that this post has a definite shelf-life. I give it a year tops. The drone industry and laws surrounding drone use in the U.S. and abroad are constantly changing as the technology advances and agencies charged with regulating their use play catch-up. Please be aware that any discussion below of applicable laws or rules to consider when using a drone are only good for the time being. These laws can, and probably will, change often in the next few years. This post is designed to lay out the bare-bones basic overview of purchasing a drone and using it safely around the public. I will cover a few key points, but this should not be considered an exhaustive discussion of utilizing drones in public outreach or research. The goal for this post is to create a quick, easy outline of important issues, resources, and best practices for drone use.

Who Governs the Skies?

One of the first things to consider before purchasing or using a drone is to find out who manages the airspace in your country. Many of these agencies are actively attempting to engage drone users, so finding them online should not be a problem. These are the best places to find out what kind of regulations are in place for drone use. In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) manages the nation’s airspace. For drone use in the U.S. some things to remember are to:

• Register a drone with the FAA and mark it with the registration number.
• Keep drones below 400 feet and within your line of site.
• Have a basic knowledge of where drones can and cannot be used. For example, the National Park System airspace, airports, sporting events, and most airspace around military installations are no drone zones.

Every country has their own set of regulations, always be sure to find out what those may be before attempting to fly a drone. Always remember that in the U.S. drones should not be flown within 5 miles of an airport without first contacting the control tower. Many of the drones currently on the market are nearly impossible to spot by airplanes descending for a landing; it is the responsibility of the drone operator to ensure that no mishaps occur.

Image 2 Registration ID for the Boas I. Design Credit: Nicole Grinnan

What Kind of Drone?

The drone industry has an ever-increasing selection of multi-purpose or task-specific drones to choose from. How best to find the right one for you? For the most part two major considerations come into play when choosing a drone: Cost and purpose. Both of these should be carefully weighed before purchasing a drone and all of the assorted equipment inevitably needed to keep it running.

Cost: Drones range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Naturally, cost may be the largest constraint you encounter; you only have so much to spend. More expensive drones tend to be larger, have better camera and video equipment, and can remain airborne longer. Remember also that the cost of the drone itself is only one aspect of the total cost. Extra batteries, carrying cases, replacement rotors, and standard repairs to the drone potentially add hundreds of dollars to the cost. Deciding how much to spend on a drone also has a great deal to do with its intended purpose.

Purpose: Generally speaking, more expensive drones allow for higher quality data collection and offer greater variation in use. Many less expensive drones still have great cameras, though they are not usually able to be switched out. If your goal is to use a drone to do demonstrations, take a few neat pics, and possibly collect data for 3D modeling, then one of the lower end drones on the market now (< $1000) should definitely meet your needs. If a primary purpose of the drone to be purchased is research, investing in better equipment pays off exponentially. This is especially true when you factor in the increased airtime these drones offer and the ability to, for example, switch out cameras, attach thermal imaging cameras, attach LiDAR sensors, etc.

There are several types of drones on the market that are increasingly being manufactured to suit specific needs. There is no point in purchasing a drone that is rigged for cinematography or large-scale mapping, for example, when what is needed is a small demonstration drone to be used intermittently. Think about how a drone will be used before purchasing it and decide if all the features you may want are really necessary.

How to Ensure Safety?

Drones, like many other tools we regularly use, can be dangerous. The rotors on drones spin fast and hard enough to cause serious wounds to a person. When using a drone around the public it is important to consider a few safety measures:

• Never fly the drone at or directly above a person or group. Drones can, and have, fallen from the sky or have just flown off. While not an everyday occurrence, it is nevertheless important that when operating a drone you take every precaution to ensure the safety of those around you.
• If the drone loses contact with the remote control and flies off then immediately alert nearby air traffic control towers.
• Keep a log of each flight. Record airtime, conditions, purpose, location, and note if you had to request permission to fly the drone as well as who granted it. Note every issue that occurs with the drone.
• Do not lose sight of the drone and consider flying with a spotter when using it around the public. The spotter’s job should be to make sure that the drone is within sight and not a danger to anything. This is especially helpful if the drone operator is busy speaking to a group and paying attention to live-streaming feeds from the drone.
• Consider purchasing propeller guards. These help ensure the safety of others as well as the drone itself should it bump into an object.

Image 3 Teaching a volunteer how drones operate. The author is acting as the drone spotter. Photo credit: Kevin Gidusko

Get Creative!

The future of archaeology is sure to see the inclusion of the drone as a standard addition to the archaeologist’s toolkit. Their use in archaeology has already captured the imagination of the public; including drones in public outreach and better educating the public about their potential applications is an easy sell. Drones can be used in teaching about aerial survey techniques, 3D photogrammetry of sites or structures, making informational videos, or even just taking pictures that offer a unique perspective.

Image 4 There are plenty of software options available for use with drones. Here, a 3D model has been created with the use of Agisoft Photoscan, a 3D photogrammetry software package. Photo credit: Kevin Gidusko

The sections above have covered, incredibly briefly, a few of the issues to consider before purchasing or using a drone for your public outreach or research. The most important things to remember are to stay informed about current regulations concerning drones and to always ensure the safety of others while flying a drone. The basic points in the sections above should help guide your initial foray into the world of drones. However, a quick search online will quickly convey the depth and breadth of this topic thus far. There is a massive amount of information to wade through and even more coming around the corner. We’ve only just begun.

Christopher N. Matthews, Alexis Alemy, and Sophia Hudzik

During the Spring 2016 semester, Montclair State University Professor Christopher N. Matthews worked with undergraduate students Alexis Alemy and Sophia Hudzik together to create an online, interactive document that tells the story of the Native and African American community of Setauket, New York, a community that has been the focus of a historical and archaeological study since 2009.[1] Click the link above to view the full document.

This document illustrates some of the results of this study on the ArcGIS ‘Story Map’ platform created by ESRI: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/. As our project is driven to address a significant problem in the way local history is told in Setauket, we call our story map ‘A Counter-Map of Setauket, New York.’ In the following we explain a little more about the theory of counter mapping, describe the local context, and detail what was involved in creating our map. Story maps can be of vital use to archaeologists and other researchers by providing a low cost, relatively easy way to make scholarship available to the public in an accessible and exciting online format. 

What is a Counter-Map?

In Rethinking the Power of Maps, Dennis Wood explains that a counter-map is a reality presented as a “counter” to that which has already been constructed through supposedly “factual” mainstream stories and maps. He explains that we unconsciously rely on maps to provide a set of unquestioned facts about the spatial world. He reminds us, however, that even the highest quality maps are carefully constructed versions of reality that represent the interests and perspectives of those who are empowered to create maps.

Maps highlight and draw our attention to what mapmakers want us to see and thus push other aspects of our spatial realities to the background or erase them altogether, and, oftentimes, it is marginal people and communities that are left out. Counter-mapping is an ideal strategy for presenting alternative narratives of the past because it literally places communities that have been neglected back on the map. Moreover, because we see and experience so much of our world through the lens of maps, we think this is an incredibly effective way to transform the dominant historical narratives by revealing the physical presence of minority groups erased by traditional maps.

Why a Counter-Map of is Setauket?

A good example of the influence that maps have over the way we perceive reality can be found in Setauket, NY.  Here the Native and African American community fights to be recognized for their contribution to the historical record, despite the fact that Setauket cultivates an identity as a historic town dating to the colonial era. In fact, histories of Setauket are flush with mainstream narratives about the Revolutionary-era Culper Spy Ring (the story behind the AMC series Turn), the 19^th century paintings of William Sidney Mount, and a  20^th century historic preservation effort that has fostered a bucolic and increasingly white upper-middle class suburban village. In other words, white leaders in Setauket have emphasized a certain version of American history that privileges Revolutionary heroes, prominent white artists, and an elite heritage. Missing from this history are the lives and contributions of Setauket’s minority community, which predated the arrival of the first European colonists and continues through the present day.

While this may be an accidental omission by those with a preference for patriotic American stories, it has created dire consequences for the nonwhite community. Historically restricted to laboring and domestic work, people of color did not accumulate the wealth now required to afford to live in “historic” Setauket. As such, many have left their ancestral home and others are being forced out by extraordinarily high costs of living. Since the predominantly Native and African American neighborhood was not included in any of Setauket’s three historic districts, houses there were not protected by any preservation statutes. As Setauket gentrified in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, developers have bought out these homes, razed them, and built expensive, out-of scale structures in their place. Erased from historical memory and excluded from the historic preservation measures that protect other old sites in town, Setauket’s minority community shrinks with each passing year.

After a recognized historic house was demolished in the neighborhood in 2005, the minority community fought to establish the Bethel-Christian Avenue-Laurel Hill Historic District. This new designation recognized the long history and contributions of Native and African Americans to Setauket and offered a measure of protection to homes in their neighborhood. Seeking to strengthen the narrative of their past and to help to secure their future in the village, the community invited archaeologists and historians to dig deeper into the historical and material record. Results of this research are the focus of the counter-map we created.

How to make a counter-map?

A counter-map is a map with a purpose. The Counter-Map of Setauket, New York is structured as a ‘story map’, meaning that it tells the story of a specific community created through collaboration between scholars, students, and descendants. Our story map is a collection of the Native and African American community’s memories and memorabilia culminating in a visual and written experience designed to not only recount this story, but to place it physically on the map of Setauket.

We began with a list of sites and stories, collected through interviews, excavations, and historical documentation. We then decided which of these places would be the most effective story tellers in our map. Each site is a page in the story map. These pages describe the sites and explain their significance, reveal their locations, and include pertinent and compelling images. The historical data came from research done by community members, team researchers, and students of Montclair State and Hofstra Universities.  

Next, we uploaded a spreadsheet of coordinates and other information about the sites onto the ArcGIS Story Map site. The coordinates are then embedded in a Google Earth map. Each site showed up initially as a pin point, which we customized with our own designs. We chose to highlight, for example, whether a site had been excavated or whether a structure was still standing. These attributes enrich the story of both the preservation and neglect of Setauket’s Native and African American community heritage.

Story maps are especially effective because they include images, and we used a lot! We housed each picture on a Flikr account because the story map platform does not store the images, but imports them to the map with a url. Images illustrate our sites, stories, and the base map we composed on ArcGIS. To pull the reader further into the story we also used other methods for visuals including interactive platforms like Juxtapose and Google Street View.

Once complete the story map arranges lots of small pieces and stories in a coherent, interactive frame. Together they create a new and larger story that challenges the dominant historical narrative of Setauket and establishes the long presence of the Native and African American community across Setauket’s landscape.

[1] This effort is led by a collaborative team known as ‘A Long Time Coming’ (ALTC), who have been supported by descendant community members, researchers, and students associated with Higher Ground Intercultural and Heritage Association, Inc., Montclair State University, Hofstra University, and Education Works.  ALTC principals are Robert Lewis (Higher Ground), Chris Matthews (MSU), and Judith Burgess (Education Works).

About a year and a half ago, at the end of my first week as the new Cultural Preservation Specialist at Delaware State Parks,  my new boss said to me, “Er, John, did I tell you about Time Travelers?”  Warily, I replied, “No, Jim, what’s that?”  “It’s the volunteer program we used to have. You’ll need to revive it.” “Oh,” I said, “I think you neglected to mention that during the interview.”

I was initially daunted by the thought of having to run a volunteer program. I had been a volunteer myself early in my career and had worked with volunteers in some of my positions since then.  I had considerable respect for volunteers. However, I also had a certain disdain for the idea that archaeology was something my agency could think that they did not have to pay to have performed on its behalf. After all, Parks did not engage “volunteer” engineers to design new restrooms or parking lots. 

While I saw a role for the interested public, under professional supervision, to assist with some of the small scale compliance projects that my office engages in, from the outset I considered Time Travelers to be a program of enrichment, not of free labor.   Volunteer labor is never completely free.  Volunteers need training, supervision, and the knowledge that their contributions of time and energy are recognized and valued.  The volunteer should get as much out of the experience as the agency gets in labor value.

I eventually found some documentation for the Time Traveler program as it had existed from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s.  It was billed as a “hands-on heritage experience for the public.”  There was a hierarchy of Recruits, Apprentices, Regular Time Travelers, Warrant Officers, Mission Leaders, and Mission Specialists, and I thought, “Ack! They expect me to recreate Star Fleet!”

What I came up with was a two-pronged approach.  While Time Travelers would be reestablished as a volunteer program for hands-on archaeology and other cultural heritage-related activities, it would also be a branding effort for cultural heritage-themed programs and events in the parks. This would give cultural heritage programs a unified identity and connect those programs to hands-on, participatory opportunities. 

I was also lucky that the Archaeological Society of Delaware (ASD) had on-going archaeological research projects and a bevy of experienced volunteers that I could cross-recruit to be Time Traveler volunteers. In our first field projects ASD members made up the bulk of the teams, but not exclusively so. Experienced veterans guided those with little to no experience. Fieldwork entailed detailed briefings of goals, objectives, methods, and anticipated results of these small (four- to six-person) teams that I closely supervised. Field days are kept short and even mildly adverse weather postpones the work.

I also developed a Basic Archaeology Class for Time Travelers. The class covers preservation ethics, key archaeological concepts and terms, and a review of the methods we use and why we use them.  Those who survive about three hours of  my lectures and who then demonstrate the ability to excavate a shovel test were awarded a newly designed embroidered Time Traveler logo patch and a certificate signed by both myself and the Director of State Parks.   The class has been offered twice now and the cadre of Time Travelers has grown to nearly 50 and includes high school students to retired seniors. 

While Time Travelers do some compliance-related work, the bulk of the activity is research-oriented and often non-destructive, such as a recent metal-detector survey of the late 19th-century Quarantine Station at Cape Henlopen State Park where “hits” were flagged, ground-truthing was limited, and nothing was collected.  The major result was confirmation that the facilities had not been burned or bull-dozed when abandoned, but apparently carefully salvaged since the debris signatures were very faint.

Time Traveler volunteers have so far assisted with over a dozen small projects and three larger on-going projects. 

As the program matures, opportunities for specialized training will be developed, such as historic and prehistoric artifact identification, artifact processing and laboratory practices, and geophysical remote sensing.  And I have so many ideas for research projects that the public will find exciting to be a part of.

Landscapes surround and interact with us; they constrain and inspire our actions. Delving into the study of past landscapes provides one of the most exciting and dynamic avenues for archaeological research. The forthcoming thematic issue of Historical Archaeology, edited by Eric Proebsting and Jack Gary, includes a collection of 12 articles that are dedicated to exploring “Current Research into the Archaeology of American Landscapes.” These contributions share a common desire to uncover how people, places, and environments have related with each other over time. In doing so, the authors carefully examine the historical and archaeological materials that have been left behind to build on previous scholarship and blaze new trails as they contribute to topics of lasting significance for our discipline.

The geographic scope of the collection ranges across urban and rural areas of North America. Articles touch on important research themes, including the African diaspora, the colonial encounters between Native Americans and Europeans, and the ecological changes associated with the growth of the modern world. Other areas of research include the landscapes of industrial labor; conflict and confinement; agricultural plantations; ornamental grounds; and historical myth and memory.

Following the introductory essay, “Contributing to the Archaeology of American Landscapes,” by Eric Proebsting and Jack Gary, articles in the forthcoming issue of Historical Archaeology 50(1) include:

• “What Towne Belong You To?” Landscape, Colonialism, and Mobility in the Potomac River Valley—Julia A. King, Mary Kate Mansius, and Scott M. Strickland
• Dynamic Landscapes: The Emergence of Formal Spaces in Colonial Virginia—Barbara J. Heath
• “As It Was Originally Laid Out by the General”: George Washington and His Upper Garden—Esther C. White
• The Multiple Landscapes of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest—Jack Gary and Eric Proebsting
• Urbanization and Landscape Change in Early-Eighteenth-Century Boston: The Environmental Archaeology of Town Dock—David Landon, Heather Trigg, Allison Bain, and Edward Morin
• Meeting at Market: The Intersection of African American Culture, Craft, and Economy and the Landscape of Charleston, South Carolina—J. W. Joseph
• Plowing Prairies and Raising Stock: Historical Ecology and Community Life on the Cotton Frontier of Southwest Arkansas—Eric Proebsting
• Intersecting Landscapes: A Palynological Study of Pueblo, Spanish, and Anglo-American Land Use in New Mexico—Kyle W. Edwards and Heather B. Trigg
• The Archaeology of Underground Mining Landscapes—Paul J. White
• Landscapes of Japanese American Internment—Stacey Lynn Camp
• The Practice and Theory of New Heritage for Historical Archaeology—Edward González-Tennant and Diana González-Tennant