By Janelle Schaeffer
As the final week of the field school came to an end, I started to think of all of the things that I have learned in this experience. As an undergraduate at Michigan State University this is my first experience in archaeology. I am an anthropology and a German major, so I have taken a few classes, but actually working in the field has taught me more about archaeology than I ever expected. I have also made many new friends in the process, and it was sad to see Caitlin, Dan, Evan and Graham leave at the end of this week. However, I will be staying for the next four weeks, while we finish up work at the Blast Furnace and the East Bank House. We will start work on Vinegar Hill, location of some of the foundry's unskilled workers houses. I am very excited to see what we discover at Vinegar Hill, and very eager to learn more about the archaeological process.
We also had a few new additions to the crew this week. Paul White, a graduate of Michigan Tech, who is now doing his doctorate work at Brown University, returned to the West Point Foundry to help us with our excavations. Paul worked at this site last summer and will be helping us up at the East Bank House. Ivan Hernandez also joined us this week. Ivan has done archaeological research in Mexico, and is now part of the Michigan Tech Industrial Archaeology Masters program. He will be working down at the Blast Furnace. Both Ivan and Paul will be joining us for the remainder of the summer. A volunteer, Norman Brahn, also joined us for just this week. He heard of the West Point Foundry through a local chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association, and was interested in gaining hands on experience in archaeology. He helped up at the East Bank House.
Since it was the final week of the field school, we have been very busy finishing up our excavation units. At the Blast Furnace, Cameron and Jeremy began work on 9P. This unit exposed more of the tailrace, and will help determine the elevation from the tailrace to the furnace. This unit was also started to expose some of the structural features of the casting shed. Patrick began work on 9Q, a 3m x 0.5m trench that extends off the southeast side of 9m. This unit was opened to expose the southern edge of the casting shed, but the trench failed to yield any substantial evidence of this. Graham and Ivan began defining the corners of the Blast Furnace by opening a couple of amorphous units on the northern wall. This helped to reveal some parts of the Blast Furnace which we otherwise would not be able to see. Arron did some closing profile work on units 9L and 9O, including drawings and final photographs.
At the East Bank House, we also had a very busy week. Caitlin and I started and finished work on excavation unit 4.5. This unit was located on the near the southeast corner of the house. We opened this unit because we wanted to gather more information about the south yard, since we had not yet opened an excavation unit in this area. The front door was located just west of the unit, so we wanted to see if activity around the door had left archaeological evidence. To our surprise, we did not discover much. Paul and Dan continued work on excavation unit 2.8. This unit is located west of the house. In their 2 meter by 2 meter unit, they clipped what seems to be a midden or trash deposit, near the south east corner. Evan and Jim opened up unit 3.15. This unit is located north of the house just east of the privies. They opened this unit to investigate the cut stone in this area and to possibly reveal the foundation of a structure. They also extended the unit north 25cm hoping to uncover possible structure. Unfortunately no structure has been found in this unit. They did, however, find a steel round file, which could indicate that this area was used to do finish masonry.
On Wednesday, three architects from the Stephen Tilly Architect firm visited us to explain some of the work that they had done on the Office Building. They talked about the stabilization that had been done to the first floor of the office and the chimneys, as well as the wing in the back of the office. It was a very interesting to see the transformation of the office from an almost complete ruin to stabilized building.
