Photos by TYSON EVANS/Daily Bruin (From left) Senior
anthropology and classics student Cindy
Oberholzer, junior anthro student Jeannette
Bond and junior political science and anthro student
Paul Song examine the "Seriation" of Coke
cans.
By Marcelle Richards
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]
A green shard of glass from a gin bottle catches the light.
Cradled between two fingers, the sculpted front reads
“Highest Medal Vienna, 1873.”
In gentle strides, fingers follow the curves of the numbers,
sweeping down the hips of the “8” and up to bridge
across the “7.”
It’s a special find for archaeology graduate student
Cameron Monroe, who found the tell-tale artifact among the ruins of
a west African palace.
The date on the bottle is a rare but lucky detail to find
““ it means the bottle was filled after 1873, dating not only
this artifact, but also others found near it, Monroe explains.
The Viennese product made it all the way to the heart of the
Republic of Benin, where the Dahomey culture thrived. The gin
bottle fragment is evidence of growing European influence in the
African kingdom between the 18th and 19th centuries.
Monroe keeps the delicate balance between playing a destructor
and detective. No site he’s touched will ever return to its
virgin state. So in a fashion characteristic of his trade, he
redeems the process by analyzing and archiving what he’s
found.
Hundreds of pieces of glass, washed and sorted by color on
trays, are marked with a serial number and sealed with dab of clear
nail polish.
Cataloguing items allows archaeologists to standardize the
process. Though the fragments are many, diagnostics, or especially
telling artifacts, are few.
Monroe showcases a tray of bottlenecks. Unlike the glass
fragments, the bottlenecks allow him to quantify how many bottles
were consumed at the site.
He joined other graduate students and faculty at the Fowler
Museum of Cultural History for the Cotsen Archaeology Institute
open house Thursday, to show the public what becomes of artifacts
after they emerge from sometimes centuries of rest.
“Once you dig it up you can’t put it back,”
said volunteer Sonia Gottesman. “If you make good records and
publish what you find, you’re being a good
archaeologist.”
In general, a select sampling from a site is brought back to
labs, where students use microscopes and their five senses to look
for trends.
There are exceptions to the rule, such as Egyptology, in which
the luxury of bringing items home does not exist due to
restrictions on importing artifacts.
The sorting and analysis must be done on-site, which can be a
frazzling experience for beginners.
Graduate student Rob Hughes remembers his first assignment in
Egypt, alone in a tomb with a team of workers, communicating and
recording his work in German.
Graduate student Cameron Monroe works on some
glass from his project.
“The workmen have done this all their lives, they were
pulling up so much stuff,” he said, recalling being
overwhelmed by the steady stream of objects handed his way for
sorting.
Assess the item, number the item, bag with like items,
repeat.
“They kept handing it to me and I’m trying to put it
into the right bag. I was trying to keep up … It was harrowing
because I didn’t feel I was able to keep everything in the
right place,” he said.
In a flurry of body parts, mummy wrappings, coffin fragments and
pottery, the then-novice Hughes panicked when the workers started
hacking up a wooden coffin nearby.
“I thought, “˜I’m not sure if they’re
supposed to be hacking this stuff,'” he said, and
called the project to a halt.
“It was too fast,” he said.
On the bright side, he said he did learn how to organize in
“true German form” ““ with maximum efficiency
““ which he applied to his team when he headed his own project
at the end of that season.
From the field, his findings were written in daily logs and
archived for reference.
But many collections never make it this far and find a final
resting place at universities or museums, boxed fresh after
excavation without ever being sorted.
Without making it to the analysis and publishing level,
artifacts are “wasted,” said fellow graduate student
John Dietler, who salvaged a collection from the 1980s through his
advisor.
A lithic, or stone tool man, Dietler decided to take on the task
of sorting microblades, chiseled drill heads, found on the Canary
Islands. The heads are spun on the ends of sticks to drill holes in
stones used for money.
It’s a tedious process filtering through the ziplock bags
of earth, stone shavings and the occasional microblade, which he
displays in front of him on a table.
For Dietler, the end goal is the same as Monroe’s and
Hughes’ ““ to sort artifacts and share the findings.
Skipping the excavation step saves him time but makes the analysis
part more difficult since he never sees the original site.
Behind him the lab is lined with shelves packed full of white
cardboard boxes of sorted collections.
When Dietler is done, his work will be added to the stash.
Dietler looks over to his left.
Eight-year-old Malinda Loeher is playing archaeologist at the
other end of the table.
“I think it’s amazing fish can have so many teeth,
besides sharks and piranhas,” she said, making chomping
sounds and motions with the jawbone of a fish found near the
islands.
A box of fish bones are her favorite attraction so far.
Julie Bernard, a graduate student in the department, nods at the
astute observation as she sorts the box of bones to which Loeher
takes a liking.
Loeher put down the jawbone and furrows her eyebrows as she
peers in the box for something new.
She pulls out two vertebrae.
“Does this part go here?” Loeher asked, nudging two
bones together.
Bernard corrects her, spacing her hands further apart.
“There,” Bernard said. “You have to look for
the vertebrae in between.”
It made sense as Loeher remembered the bones get bigger toward
the bottom of the spine.
“Bones will grow where you need them,” Bernard
said.
She paused.
“Do you play tennis?”
The kid nodded and hopped in place.
“I do.”
“Are you right handed?”
“Yup.”
Bernard explained the right arm bone will grow bigger because it
is used more.
The girl acted out the motions, swinging her arm back as if
serving the ball.
“You can also get tennis elbow like my mom,” she
said as her parents came to fetch her.
She took a last look at the bones and said her thank you’s
as she started to make her way to other labs.
Bernard slowly resorted the box of fish bones as she waved
goodbye to the Loehers, placing vertebrae with vertebrae, ribs with
ribs, shells with shells.