25 June 2018

Scout Landin

Hello and welcome back to another blog post by me, Scout Landin! I am a senior about to graduate in August with a double major in anthropology and food studies. I am very passionate on learning about cultures and societies -especially through food and diet! I also really enjoy being outside in nature and working with my hands during this field school opportunity.

On this cloudy and overcast day, most people are probably inside and wishing it wasn’t gray out. On the other hand, the students at the Wylie House field school are welcoming the cool breeze and working their butts off In their last week (can you believe it’s been three weeks already?! Because I seriously cannot…). Today, I have been working on opening Unit 3 to the north, south and west. Last Friday, we thought our feature was in the next unit to the east, in Unit 1, but in Unit 3 we have uncovered lot of bricks and mortar and an outline that suggests the hot house/ green house is actually in that unit. Our plan is to open the three sides to uncover the outline like the one we have seen from last Friday. This entails digging up the humus, or the topsoil, then digging into what we call layer 2. This process usually takes awhile because we are skim-shoveling and making sure the ground is level for each layer. Once that’s done we still have to trowel back to get a clear view of the soil and the outline we will hopefully see.

While I was digging and expanding our unit, I found some really neat things. I found my first piece of ceramic wear, plain white pieces (the big rectangle looking piece) and other small pieces. Other people have found the pretty blue and purple transfer wear when they were digging; and in the screen someone found a ceramic/clay marble. These artifacts, especially the ones that I found, give me hope by the end of this week we will proudly say we have found the Wylie family’s hot house.

26 June 2018

Tori G.

Hi again, it’s Tori. So today was spent working on excavating our greenhouse feature (for real this time), covering everything fom torrential downpour, and then repeating what we did originally to fix the effects of rain and our tarps. Rainy days are still eventful at Wiley House, because they give us the opportunty to keep up with paperwork, wash artifacts, and process data. One thing I have been working on with data processing is creating photogrammetric models of the first unit I worked on, unit 2. These three-dimensional models are created by using software that stitches together multiple two-dimmensional images. It creates a model that can show soil color and stratigraphy, enable exact measurementsto be taken, and give us the ability to view a unit from angles that are not otherwise possible. Photogrammetry is a relatively new tool that is being used by archaeologists, and we use the technology on a daily basis in underwater archaeology.

While I really miss being underwater documenting shipwrecks, it is great to have terrestrial experience from this field project. I am grateful for this experience not only for the techniques I have learned that are used in terrestrial archaeology, but also for bettering and adapting my previous skills from underwater archaeology. I owe everyone a huge ‘thank you’ for helping me catch up after a late start and for explaining the process to me and teaching me. I can’t believe our time is almost over here, but we will have plenty of time together this semester processing artifacts- a task that lasts much longer than the field projet itself!

27 June 2018

Maclaren Guthrie

Hello all, I’m Maclaren Guthrie and I am the undergraduate archaeological assistant for this field school. During the past fall semester I was one of Indiana University’s Bicentennial interns. My project was focused on the transition from agriculture to floriculture especially in relation to Bloomington and the Wylie family which culminated in the exhibit in the Wylie House Education Center for this field school.

Maclaren holding a small piece of transferware — This is a picture of me holding a sherd of black transferware that we found on a previous day of excavating.

Today I’m here to talk to you about something extremely exciting: we have finally identified the greenhouse! The feature (feature 1) we previously thought was the greenhouse ended up dissipating and was too small to match the dimensions of the pit that Theophilus Wylie III recalled in his memory map. We have now rediscovered the pit in our unit 3/unit 3 extension areas, where it does seem to mimick T.A.W. III’s remembered size of about 6 ft wide.

Liz at site of greenhouse, squatting in dirt — Here is our wonderful field director Liz Watts Malouchos with our outlined feature.

In addition to focusing our excavation efforts on this super interesting feature, we also backfilled two of our completed units this morning. Backfilling is a necessary part of archaeology, though it is a labor intensive and not super fun endeavor. Luckily, the Wylie House had a wheelbarrow we borrowed to move dirt more quickly. Unit 2 and unit 4 were both completely refilled with dirt as we got the information we needed from the soil and profiles, so they were no longer required since they weren’t part of our greenhouse feature.

Filled in ground — Units 4 and 2 after being backfilled.

28 June 2018

Jorge Allier

Hi! My name is Jorge Rios Allier, I am a first year PhD student in Anthropology Department. My research project is focus to explain the interactions between heritage users and owners in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, mainly focus in explain the economic value of archaeology and how archaeology can be useful to create development for local people.

The Wylie House Bicentennial project has been a good opportunity to learn how historic archaeology is done in United States. Also it has been a huge chance to know more about the history of IU since his first steps. The Wylie House Museum is an extraordinarily project that combines different fields: History, Building maintenance, restoration, archaeology, master gardening, agricultural knowledge, etc.

Today wasn’t a regular day, it started so excited because we visited to the Wylie House’s roof. The roof is a place for a deep breath, the original view allowed to see the first IU Bloomington campus that nowadays is a park and a shopping mall. All the team took some funny photos, also me even I am not a photogenic one.

View from roof of Wylie House — View from Wylie House’s Widow’s Walk

About the fieldwork, today is a three stations day. The first one is the pit filling activity, because we are in the last week all the ended pits has to be cover and most of the crew is helping with that. The second one is the delimitation of the main project feature that we can call it “the green house wall”, it is interesting the construction technology of the XIX century for me. The third one was the total station interaction for students, always is useful to know the basics, no matters if you have the newest technology.

Finally, I would say that Wylie House Bicentennial experience has been an enriching one for me. This project, in particular, could have an enormous impact on IU identity in this celebration times.