Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Land of Lost Bones

These last two months have been hectic so here's a quick research update:

My Current Research: The samples I thought I was going to receive from New Orleans were and still are caught up in the politics of the Louisiana state government. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

Thankfully, though, to Shayla Monroe and Kate Birmingham, who I am forever indebted too, I was able to get into contact with Rebecca Morehouse at the Maryland Archaeological Conservatory Laboratory in St. Leonard, Maryland. After literally a week of back and forth emails I was able to drive up and select four samples from the MAC Lab.

 I have the faunal remains from a late 18th and early 19th century plantation in Calvert County, MD; from a the Calvert County residence of a free African American woman who occupied the site between 1839 and 1868; from a post bellum African American slave and tenant dwelling site in St. Mary's County, and a post bellum, early 20th century African American slave cabin site in Calvert County.

I really haven't spent a lot of time focusing on how to place these samples in a context that links them all together since they are spread over a century, but since Maryland occupied a unique space geographically and ideologically in the 18th and 19th centuries it will probably deal with that aspect.

As far as the samples... I've had them about a month now and I've identified, counted, and weighed around 1,000 bones from cows, pigs, cotton tail rabbits, raccoons, opossums, rats/mice, squirrels, fish, turtles, chickens, turkeys, sharks, sand dollars, and some UID species. Here are some of the more unique elements that I've come across  two of my samples that are almost ready to be curated.

Fossilized fish
Rabbit mandible
Cow vertebrae

UID shark's tooth
UID bird's beak
Cow molars
Fossilized  sand dollar


One faunal sample approx. 300 individual bones


This process has not been a quick one and it has proven that taking a year off between working with samples probably wasn't the best idea.