Geoarchaeology on the Fort Davis Archaeology Project

Written by Erin Rodriguez, FODAAP co-director and geoarchaeologist

If you’ve ever stopped by FODAAP excavations, you may have seen something like this:

In this photo I am taking a micromorphology sample from a shovel test pit excavated during our 2014 season. As a geoarchaeologist, I use geological methods to study archaeological issues – understanding the human past through material remains. In this case those material remains are the actual sediments and soils that we as archaeologists excavate in order to recover artifacts, map architecture, and analyze the spatial contexts of archaeological materials. These sediments are fundamentally important as they allow us to understand the context of recovered materials which is the basis of scientific archaeological investigations. Further, human activity (as well as animal, plant, and environmental actions and processes) leaves traces on sediments and soils that can be reconstructed through detailed and careful analysis.

UCB FODAAP Micromorphology Sample

The primarily methods of geoarchaeological analysis that I use as part of the Fort Davis Archaeological Project are microscale analyses looking at microscopic physical relationships between sediment features as well as chemical aspects of soils such as organic matter content, pH, and phosphate and heavy metal concentrations. In the image at the beginning of this post I am taking a micromorphology sample – an undisturbed block of sediment which will be impregnated with resin and cut into ultrathin microscope slides so I can analyze the spatial relationships between sediment components. This allows me to better understand relationships between features observed in the field, to identify microscopic sediment components that provide new information about archaeological deposits, and to reconstruct the processes which create and effect archaeological sites.

The image above shows how a slide from a micromorphology sample relates to a profile from a unit excavated by FODAAP in 2014. This particular slide showed the presence of localized burning of a trash deposit which was not identified during excavation. The burning is only in one slide from part of this excavation unit, so it may have been an intentional burn as part of maintenance or cleaning of the dump.  This slide also contains microremains from artifacts found in the trash deposit (metal fragments, glass shards, eggshell) as well as evidence of insect activity.

UCB FODAAP Micromorphology

Micromorphology, as well as other microscale geoarchaeological analyses, has the potential to provide essential information about human activities, processes which create archaeological sites, and factors which can effect sites over time such as erosion, animal activity, and other factors. While as not commonly represented in archaeological explanations, geoarchaeological data enriches our interpretations of the past and enables us to better understand the lives and actions of past people.

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FODAAP at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference!

from left to right: Annie Danis, Laurie Wilkie, Rosemary Joyce (Discussant), Katrina Eichner (Chair), Kirsten Vacca, Jaime Arjona, Annelise Morris, Megan Springate, David Hyde, Erin Rodriguez (Chair)

Exciting News! FODAAP placed second in the Society for Historical Archaeology’s (SHA) Diversity Field School Competition. Our team is very excited to receive this award as part of the SHA’s annual conference in Seattle, WA. For more information about the award please follow the link to the GMAC blog. Several members of the FODAAP team also presented papers as part of the conference (see titles below). We are very happy to be sharing our research with the archaeological community and to continue our commitment to inclusive archaeological education. Special thanks to Professor Rosemary Joyce who was the discussant for our session. Also, look forward to recorded video of Laurie Wilkie’s plenary session talk that focused on work at Fort Davis!

SHA 2015 presentations by FODAAP members:

Presentations with (*) included material from FODAAP. All presentations were part of the session: Queering Historical Archaeology: Methods, Theory, and Practice, organized by FODAAP co-directors Katrina C. L. Eichner and Erin C. Rodriguez. The session was sponsored by the SHA Gender and Minority Affairs Council.

*Katrina C. L. Eichner (FODAAP Director): Queering the Norm: Reinterpreting the Heterosexual Ideal

*Erin C. Rodriguez (FODAAP co-Director): A Multiplicity of Voices: Towards a Queer Field School Pedagogy

Laurie A. Wilkie (FODAAP Faculty Mentor): All The Single Ladies: Queering Race In The 19^th Century Through The Materiality of African-American Female-Headed Households (with Annelise Morris)

Ann E. Danis (FODAAP 2015 Staff): Feeling Queer(ed)

David G. Hyde (FODAAP 2015 Staff): Queering the Household Group: Challenging the Boundaries of an Archaeological Unit

Why Archival Research Matters

Written by Naphtalie Jeanty (2014 Field School student and HAAS Scholar)

Archival research is a mélange of finding nothing you need, crying over your papers, finally finding something, and catching leads. You have off days and good days. Sometimes I can come back to my cabin and really feel like I have acquired enough information to do half of my project and other days I ask myself why I’m doing it in the first place. On the bad days I have to remind myself that archival research is important. When it comes to archaeology looking at documents allows us to put together the missing pieces of the puzzle that we could not put together with artifacts. For instance, we surveying an area where there was supposed to be, it was archival research that allowed us to know where we should be looking. In my own research has helped me to be able to paint a more vivid picture of what individual Buffalo Soldier’s lives were like. I can piece lives together by looking at depositions, furnishing studies, letters, birth records…etc. These “primary documents” are imperative for me to be able to put artifacts that I find into context. I’ve been able to find out everything from which soldiers would hang out with each other to how their beds were arranged in relation to each other. I have found interesting back-stories to different soldiers. One of the saddest was a soldier who was 1/32 black (his mother was 1/16). He was able to pass as white but married a black woman. According to a deposition she wrote, he left her suddenly and she found out later that he got married to a white woman, had children, changed his name so no one could find him, and came back to her to tell her that she should have been the one to file for divorce so that the fact that he originally married a woman of color could stay under wraps in the white community. This paints a picture for me about what racial tensions where like and how marriages might have been used to move up the social hierarchy. They felt the need to marry “up” and we can see in the censuses from different years that gradually their races changed. A black man in 1870 could have been listed as black, but by 1900, he may be listed as “Mexican” or “Mulatto”. Archival research allows for me to be able to tell these soldiers’ full stories as best I can.