Digital Technology in Comparative Studies
Paper Presented at the 2005 Annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference in York, England.
We’ve gathered together today to discuss the project “A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture,” and to describe our preliminary findings to date. In this presentation, I will give a brief overview of the project, the digital processes used in it, and some of the results we’re gaining from these digital technologies.
Despite our rather bold project title we recognize that this is by no means the first comparative, archaeological study of the colonial Chesapeake. There have been a number of comparative studies of the people who lived in the Chesapeake drainage during the colonial period. To name but a few: Lois Carr and Lorena Walsh (1988), as well Dennis Pogue (1993) have studied the standards of living of the European immigrants in Maryland and Virginia; and Henry Miller (1979) examined the diet and subsistence patterns of the English colonists. In 1981 Cary Carson and his colleagues produced a comprehensive study of the architecture of colonial structures in the Chesapeake area; and Pogue (1991) has compared the tobacco pipes from sites in Maryland. Furthermore, there are the collections of articles concerning the archaeology of Virginia edited by Reinhart and Pogue (1993), where themes such as fortifications, house patterns, consumer goods and the standard of living, and the life styles of various ethnic groups are discussed. Lastly the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery (http://www.daacs.org/), or DAACS, is a powerful and useful web based research tool that has pooled together the artifact and context information of archaeological sites in the Chesapeake that were occupied by slaves; and while many of the sites found in DAACS were not occupied during the colonial period, the comparative goal is comparable to what we wish to achieve with our project. Our project is, to my knowledge, the first multi-institutional collaborative project that attempts to look at a range of material classes in an effort to gain a fuller understanding of the behavioral patterns and relationships of all inhabitants of the Colonial Chesapeake. We are interested in understanding how members of the various social and cultural groups (including Europeans, Indians and Africans) interacted and formed social and physical boundaries. We hope to examine how these groups created a shared landscape through the material culture.
To set the stage of Colonial Chesapeake society we must
include a variety of players. There were the Native American
groups that inhabited the watersheds and interior of the
Chesapeake region, and prior to European settlement these
tribes had interacted with a delicate political strain that
was severely altered following contact with the European
colonists Initially, the majority of the immigrants in the
Chesapeake area were English and included a mixture of socioeconomic
classes, although a greater part arrived as servants. Gentry
gentlemen, farmers, craftsman, and laborers; men and women;
young and old; bound laborer and land owners packed their
belongings with minimal knowledge of what awaited them upon
arrival at their new home, much of it gleaned from promotional
literature. They developed new societies in the New World
that sprang from their commonly understood cultural systems
established in England. The arrival of Africans and a growing
dependence on slavery following the tobacco price depression
in the late 17th c. further altered the social boundaries.
To make inferences concerning these groups and their interaction,
we’ve compiled 18 rural archaeological sites to re-examine
the spatial distributions of artifacts, the architecture,
and the activities at these sites. Archaeologists from Anne
Arundel County Lost Towns Project, the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation, the George Washington Fredericksburg Foundation,
Historic Mount Vernon, and the Maryland Archaeological Conservation
Laboratory are participating as staff members for this project,
which is supported by generous grants from the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the Virginia Department
of Historical Resources. Site catalogues and records were
contributed by several collection repositories, including
the Lost Towns Project, the APVA Jamestown Rediscovery Project,
the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Virginia Department
of Historical Resources, the University of Mary Washington,
and the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.
Dr. Julia A. King is the project supervisor who, along with
Ed Chaney, has given invaluable information and technical
support to me, the Lead Project Archaeologist.
Sites
Because we are interested in the every day interactions and relationships that took place among the people living in the Colonial Chesapeake, we’ve selected archaeological sites where this interaction was most likely to have taken place: namely rural plantation sites with European and African residents and neighboring Indian settlements. The sites represent a combined occupation range from circa 1620 to circa 1750. The Camden and Posey sites, which are located in the Rappahannock and Potomac drainages respectively, represent Native American households, while the other sixteen sites were colonist’s plantations. These plantation sites represent wealthy planter families, middling planters, tenant farmers, servants, and slaves. The Sandy’s, Carter’s Grove, Reverend Buck, Rich Neck, and Jordan’s Journey sites are all located in the James River drainage near Williamsburg. The Old Chapel Field and Clifts Plantation sites are located in the Potomac River drainage. The Compton, Patuxent Point, Mattapany, and King’s Reach sites are located in the Patuxent River drainage. Burle’s, Homewood, Chaney’s Hills, and Chalkley’s are found in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and Bennett’s Point is located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Databases and Using Digital Technologies
Beginning in September 2003, it has been my responsibility to see that data from each site is collected, standardized, analyzed, and interpreted. This is being done by compiling the context and artifact information from each site into a structured database with authorized fields and terms. Therefore, at the completion of this project there will be 18 compatible databases available. This is one of the most important products of our project. Following our analysis and interpretation, future researchers will have the ability to utilize the information for their own studies, to expand our work, or to challenge our conclusions. To that I’d add that our second major accomplishment of this project is that it has forced an upgrade in the media used for some collection information. The complete catalogues for Clifts, Jordan’s Journey and Camden were only available in paper form, and we have modified this collection information so that it is now in digital form.
In order to ensure database consistency we have had to modify the catalogue information, while retaining all of the data corresponding to each artifact. Due to fiscal and time constraints, we are not able to re-catalogue each collection, and we are limited by the original catalogue as provided by the collection repository. While we are not re-cataloging the collections, there are some records where the full artifact or context information was not noted or was incorrect. In these cases, I have had to attempt to retrieve ‘lost’ or ‘unknown’ information. While this takes considerable time, the benefit is that we are able to systematically study the sites and make honest inter- and intra-site comparisons. One example of this is Bennett’s Point, which was excavated intermittently between the summers of 1966 and 1973. Sadly the principal investigator, John Ludlow, passed away in 1974, and this created much confusion concerning the methodologies and results from this site. Fortunately for us, Kit Wesler had published a comprehensive report based on Ludlow’s field records and notes in 1984. Still when I started working on Bennett’s Point, we were unable to spatially map artifacts at all because if the units were mapped in from a datum point in the field, the North/East coordinates were not identified. I was able to address this by importing this drawing of the excavations at the site into Surfer® and digitizing the location of the units on the image. While this does not accurately represent the location of the excavation units, it does allow us to get a sense of where the artifacts were recovered in relation to the structure. At other sites I’ve had to generate the coordinates for piece plotted artifacts, determine the size of excavation units, and attempt to pinpoint the exact locations of major features at the sites. Using the information on recovery methods that we have received from the original excavators and the collections repositories, we will be able to produce a truly comprehensive database for all interested parties.
Once the tedious work of systematically compiling the information into a database is completed, I was then able to make various artifact distribution maps. We are using the software program Surfer® to spatially represent the relationships of the material culture and the remains of various features. This has also helped us to locate and analyze potential middens on the sites. At the King’s Reach site, for example, we have been able to broaden our understanding of the relationships between the inhabitants through midden analysis. Here we have two structures relatively close together and connected by a slot fence. Both were used as dwellings. While the 30-by-20 foot structure was likely occupied by Richard Smith Jr., we are uncertain as to who occupied the second structure, measuring 20-by-10-feet. Whomever it was, the two households are strikingly similar, based on the type and quantities of artifacts recovered from middens located around the buildings. The understanding was that servants, or possibly slaves, are quartered in this second structure and therefore we had expected to see a greater distinction between the two households. At 18CV84, which was an outbuilding of the Kings Reach Plantation used to quarter individuals, we believe were African slaves, the midden area revealed drastically different artifact percentages. We’re going through the same process for each of the 18 sites: modifying and perfecting the database, generating a series of artifact distribution maps, and locating and analyzing the middens.
Increasingly we are running in to the question of how to make inferences by comparing these sites. The answer to that question is in reality constantly evolving. The problem is that practically no two sites were excavated using the same methods. For instance, at Compton the plow zone was systematically excavated using 2.5x2.5 foot units screened through a quarter inch mesh; yet the principal archaeologist did not profile the posts found below the plow zone, making interpretations of the layout and design, not to mention period, of the buildings at the site difficult. At Jordan’s Journey, the plow zone was only surface collected; practically all of the recovered material came from feature contexts, which was painstakingly recovered. At King’s Reach, the plow zone was excavated in 2x2 meter units and screened through 3/8-inch mesh. MacCord excavated the Camden site plow zone in 5x5 foot units and screened through ¼-inch mesh. Even excavation methods at a single site often change, such occurred at the Sandy’s site. Here archaeologists excavated 158 2.5-foot test units at 10-foot intervals in one phase, then two years latter returned and opened 235 5-foot squares. The identification, description, and quantification of material vary as well. Anne Arundel County attempts to calculate the minimum number of oysters by only counting the left halves of female oysters. At Patuxent Point, shell volume was recorded in the field by measuring in a bucket. Now obviously the environment is distinctly different at each site, and so are the extraneous pressures felt by the archaeologists. Excavators at Compton, Jordan’s Journey, Patuxent Point, and Sandy’s, for example, were desperately trying to retrieve as much information as possible before developers permanently destroyed the sites. This is a problem that plays a major role on nearly all of the sites included in this project, and in reality most of the sites excavated in the United States, and each archaeologist must use the methods that work best for his or her circumstances. I did not bring up these challenges to criticize the archaeologists or the methods used, but simply to point out that there are differences in the collection of the material at these sites and therefore difficulties in making specific comparisons between the sites. Truly, if we waited for a collection of perfect sites, this project would never have started. But it does pose problems for future discussion and consideration.
Camden vs. Posey
Yet despite the differences, we are beginning to find and interpret patterns both within and between the sites. For example, at Camden and Posey the environment is relatively similar. Both were part of Indian settlements occupied during the second half of the seventeenth century and were located in close proximity to European settlements. A clear majority of the artifacts from both sites are traditional Native American objects such as pottery; however, there is a representative sample of traditional European objects such as bottle glass and white clay tobacco pipe.
Maryland vs. Virginia and the Standard of Living
We are also beginning to see some striking variability when comparing the Maryland and Virginia sites. The Virginia sites reveal a greater military character, which would be expected due to their earlier occupation and the struggle at that time between the colonists and indigenous peoples. Secondly, when comparing the colonial sites from the two states we see in Virginia a greater variety and quantity of small finds relating to home beautification and personal adornment. Silver sequins and hair pins recovered at Jordan’s Journey; a glass linen smoother and apothecary weights from Sandy’s; and braided silver thread at Rich Neck are but a few examples of the rich small finds that are coming from the Virginia sites in our project. Two of the papers later in this symposium will speak to the standards of living and consumer habits in the Colonial Chesapeake.
Web Page
The last digital component that I want to discuss today is the web page we’re putting together for this project, which is really starting to take form due to the tireless efforts of Greg Brown at Colonial Williamsburg. This web site will enable other researchers to utilize all of the data we’ve worked to put together. We’ve put downloadable copies of each of the site databases, site descriptions, and artifact distribution maps on the web page. The result will be that we’ve made our conclusions and interpretations available to the greater public, as well as the raw data, allowing researchers to gain their own perspective on the archaeological sites and the project. It can also be utilized by researchers who wish to compare and contrast their archaeological sites to the 18 included in this project.
Conclusions
To conclude, conducting comparative archaeological studies is a trend that has developed over the past few decades, and with each project the concept and methodologies become more and more robust. In doing such comparative projects, digital technologies are essential for a successful study. Due to a comprehensive database set and the ability to spatially map the material culture recovered at the sites, the project “A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture” is proving to be a powerful tool to improving our understanding of human behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake. In fact, the remaining papers in this session will address the various research potentials and interpretations gained through this collaborative project.
References
- Carr, Lois Green, and Lorena S. Walsh
- 1988 The Standard of Living in the Colonial Chesapeake. William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 45 (1988): 135-159.
- Carson, Cary, Norman F. Barka, Garry Wheeler Stone, William M. Kelso, and Dell Upton
- 1981 Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies. Winterthur Portfolio V. 16, pp.135-191.
- Miller, Henry M.
- 1979 The Planters’ Victuals: A Study of Changing Subsistence Patterns on the Colonial Chesapeake. Paper presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
- Pogue, Dennis J.
- 1991 Clay Tobacco Pipes from Four 17th Century Domestic Sites in the Lower Patuxent River Valley of Maryland. In The Archaeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe: XII. Chesapeake Bay. Davey, Peter and Dennis J. Pogue eds., pp. 3-26. Liverpool Monographs in Archaeology and Oriental Studies No. 14, BAR International Series 566, Oxford, England.
- 1993 Standard of Living in the 17th-Century Chesapeake: Patterns of Variability Among Artifact Assemblages. In The Archaeology of 17th-Century Virginia. Reinhart, Theodore R. and Dennis J. Pogue eds., pp. 371-399 The Dietz Press, Richmond, Virginia.
- Reinhart, Theodore R. and Dennis J. Pogue eds.
- 1993 The Archaeology of 17th-Century Virginia. The Dietz Press, Richmond, Virginia.