June 13th 2019 - Relaxing Lab Day.

Today was another relaxing day in the lab. Seven students arrived throughout the morning, and all others worked from home. As the project due date approaches, students are working harder and more diligently than ever.

Aza spent the day sketching the cedar plank road from the McKenzie Creek site and looking at other roads in the area to compare it to. She also printed out photos of the road which she is working on numbering to match the data in her report.

Aza working on the cedar plank road report.

Karoline analyzed the raw data she collected for the waste audit. She found that in total we used 105 meters of flagging tape and 90 meters of string. She also calculated that 45 percent of our non-plastic personal waste was granola bar wrappers, which are very difficult to recycle due to the diversity of materials used to create them. On top of that, 32% of our plastic personal waste was wrapping for dairy products such as string cheese.

Karoline working on the waste audit.

As I said in yesterday's post, Allyah did some more research on the tube that Mitch found in his unit last week. The tube that was manufactured by a branch of The Kendall Company, Bauer and Black, is most likely a burn ointment that came in a Boy Scouts of America first aid kit. The Kendall Company had a branch in Toronto, which is most likely where the one in our collection was shipped from. Allyah can't find any pictures of the actual ointment tube online, all images show only the box.

Shaunti did more research on a fastener that was found at the McKenzie Creek site. She looked quite deeply into it, couldn't find a brand, but found an image that looked like the fastener we have on a leather mitten. After reading more about it, she has made the conclusion that the item was most likely from a leather mitten like the one in the photo she found. Most loggers used gloves that separate their fingers while at work, which also lead her to a conclusion that it was possibly used in the winter. Loggers didn't work in the harsh winters, so if that is the case, it shows that people were living at the McKenzie Creek site after the logging season had ended.

Bob also brought down some books from his office for students to take if they wanted. I got a copy of "Coast Salish Essays" by Wayne Suttles, and "Art of the Northwest Coast" by Aldona Jonaitis. Other students got more books on First Nations in British Columbia, and he even gave out some textbooks that he no longer needed.

Books from Bob.

Next week is our last, and we are all eager to finish our projects. Next Thursday we will be presenting our project findings to the class, and everyone is excited to learn about what others have been working on. On Monday, all students will meet in the lab to discuss their projects with Bob.

June 12th 2019 - Quiet Lab.

For the remaining duration of the field school, students will be spending most of their time working on their projects in the lab or at home. Bob opened up the lab at 8:30 in the morning, and two students were waiting and ready to work. As time went on, more students trickled in if they needed items from the lab to work on their projects.

Karoline looked through and recorded items in the last bag of project waste from when students deconstructed camp yesterday. Angus came in to get Bob's opinion on the rough draft of his written report on industrial artifacts, which Bob happily did. Phoenix also came into the lab to work on his report on bottles found at the McKenzie Creek site, and Ali continued working on line drawings of artifacts all day.

Ali working on line drawings.

I spent the day going through level bags and creating tables in a word document of their contents. I finished looking through all of the bags, and I am over half-way done the written report. We have a total of 42 bags from the 2019 field season.

Looking through past level bag reports and writing up my own.

Rohan worked on his report on buttons and clasps in the lab as well. So far he has over 3000 words in his report. There is lots to know about the different types of buttons found at the McKenzie Creek site, and the materials they pair with. Shaunti is helping Rohan research a certain brand of work overalls that he believes pair with a few buttons in the collection.

Again, Nikki spent all day photographing artifacts from the McKenzie Creek site. Sepideh also dropped in this afternoon to get some pictures from Nikki for the video.

Bob spent some time clearing out the lab storage room that is filled with field equipment and projects from past years. In the late morning, he pulled out maps from field projects he has worked on in the past, and some maps from the early stages of the Seymour Valley Archaeology Project. He offered the maps that he no longer had use for to students working in the lab, and a few people took him up on the offer. Interestingly, Bob stumbled upon a few maps from Ontario, and they just happened to be of Nikki's hometown, so she got to keep those ones!

Bob and Nikki looking for maps. 

Bob clearing out the lab storage room.

Some students also spent time working on their projects at home. Mitch finished up drawings of the rock feature and scanned them on to the computer. Aza also got a lot of work done on the sketch of the cedar plank road. She finished taking measurements yesterday in the field, and now has everything she needs to draw her pictures to scale.

Sketch of the rock feature done my Mitch.

Most people were very focused on working today, which provided a quiet and peaceful lab to work in. Hopefully we will all be just as productive tomorrow as we were today.

June 11th 2019 - Packing Up.

Today has been a productive day for many. Just over half of the students worked in the lab to try and get as much of their project done as they could. The other students spent the day in the field, breaking camp and finishing up measurements for sketches and final reports.

In the field, students dissembled both of the tents, the picnic tables and moved all of our project supplies back to lab with two trips in Bob's car. Some also helped backfill the excavation units that we closed last week.

Angus, Aza and Mitch deconstructing the tent. Photo by Bob.

Phoenix and Kirsten taking apart the picnic tables. Photo by Bob.

Alyssa, Aza and Mitch filling our excavation units back up with dirt. Photo by Bob.

In the lab, Ali spent the day working on line drawings of artifacts. She spent the first two hours working on sketching the bottle that Mitch found last Thursday, which we now know is most likely not a toothpaste tube. It has "Bauer and Black" and "Toronto" engraved on the lid which lead us to believe that it was some type of medical ointment made by the Kendall Company in the 1920s or 1930s. Allyah is researching more in depth about the tube, so hopefully we can narrow down the date. Ali has also started a sketch of a teapot from the Hastings Seymour camp.

Line drawings done by Ali of the Bauer and Black tube.

Yesterday I mentioned that Ali has been working hard on sketches from the field as well, so I thought I would share one of her favourites with all of you. This is a drawing of Mitch working at the Rock Feature from a few weeks back. Everyone is excited to see more sketches from her!

Ali's sketch of Mitch.

Fazila finished measuring, recording and taking pictures of all of the ceramics from the McKenzie Creek site today. Allyah helped her take the pictures while she focused on measuring the diameter of each rice bowl with callipers.

Fazila recording and measuring ceramics.

Nikki spent all day with her camera, and artifacts from McKenzie Creek. She worked on getting pictures of ponds jars and ceramics on the white and black backgrounds she created. Sepideh also wants to add images of buttons and toothbrushes to the video she is creating, so Nikki also worked on taking those this afternoon.

Nikki taking pictures on black and white backgrounds. 

A collection of ponds cold cream jars from McKenzie Creek.

I focused on looking through level bags that we created in the 2019 field season. We had bags from each of the 7 open units, and also a few bags from test pits done around the site. I managed to go through over half of the bags, removing all of the contents of each, recording them, and weighing the flat sheets of metal that were found. When I finish going through all of the bags, I will put all of the information into one document so it will be easy to see the contents of each level bag without looking through them.

Recording the contents of 2019 level bags.

Siobhan spent the day researching a few artifacts that Bob assigned for her to look into. She did a lot of research on Colgate toothpaste, because previous field seasons found some tubes on the site. She narrowed down the date of the toothpaste tubes to have been manufactured between 1914-1928 from the broader date of 1857-1928. In the afternoon she also started researching ponds cold cream jars. 

Siobhan researching ponds cold cream jars.

Overall the day went very well, and many students were very productive! Tomorrow most students will be working from home or in the lab, but there is the chance that Bob could take a few students to another site in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. Check out tomorrow's post to see what happens!

June 10th 2019 - Crunch Time.

This morning all students met in the lab to begin our weekly discussions. Last week we didn't have a day where everyone was in the classroom together, so it was nice to all meet and give updates on our projects.

We started the day by talking about our grades for the course, and about the final exam that was supposed to occur next week. Bob mentioned how over the weekend he was contemplating whether or not students should have to do the final exam this field season. In previous years, students would fill out a site inventory form and create a map of a site that was unfamiliar to them. In recent years, the form has changed substantially to where it would be hard for a non-archaeologist to complete it with little information on the site. Bob also mentioned that to do well on the exam you need to have practice with mapping, which takes up a lot of time. He said it may be better for students to have lab time to work on their projects, so he proposed to change how the course is weighted. Our class unanimously decided that we will weigh professionalism and field notes more heavily, and spend more time perfecting our projects, rather than doing the final exam.

After having a long discussion about that, Bob mentioned that he visited the Burnaby Village Museum on Saturday, and got the chance to view the ofuro they have there. If you want to see some pictures of the re-opening of the ofuro in 2015, you can check it out here. If you live in the lower mainland and want to visit the Burnaby Village Museum, you can find information about when they're open on their website.

The ofuro at the Burnaby Village Museum. Photo by Bob.

Next, we began giving updates to everyone on the progress of our projects. So far Nikki has taken 1800 photos of artifacts and almost 2000 pictures of the site. Shaunti, Siobhan, and Allyah have all been researching artifacts found at the McKenzie Creek site, and Rohan has finished measuring the diameter of all buttons, and described the materials that they were made with. Mitch and Alyssa are working on their sketches of the rock feature and ofuro. Alyssa will be in the field tomorrow taking some final measurements of the rocks at the ofuro, and Mitch will be working on his drawings. Ali has completed 4 sketches of students working and has 3 more on the way. She will also be doing some line-drawings of artifacts found in the field. Angus and Phoenix have found minimum numbers of barrel rings, lanterns and bottles. So far, Angus has come up with 12 barrel rings and 12 lanterns, and Phoenix has found over 90 bottles. Harman has finished cataloguing 500 artifacts, with 300 still left to do. Once she is done with her written catalogue, she will be putting everything into an excel spreadsheet. Fazila finished measuring and recording information about ceramics from the Suicide Creek site, and she will now be working on tableware found at the McKenzie Creek site. Kirsten is almost finished writing up her report on plant life at McKenzie Creek, she is just looking at satellite images to create a map of the foliage. Aza has a few more measurements to do tomorrow on site of the cedar plank road, and then she can finish up sketches for her report. Karoline has started writing her report on the waste audit, but she will need to wait until camp is broken down to get the total amount of garbage produced by the project. I am also starting a small project on the side of the blog, creating a report on the level bags from 2019 excavations. We are all working hard to get our projects done quickly and neatly.

Bob also mentioned during our round-table discussion that he has been emailing back and forth with Lisa from the Nikkei Museum who visited our site last week. She has been thinking about the possible uses of the rock feature that Mitch is working on, and says that it could have been a washing station due to its close proximity to the creek. Hopefully we can do some more research on that type of structure in the future to try to figure out what the purpose of the rock feature on our site is.

After lunch, a few students travelled with Bob to the Suicide Creek site. Ali, Aza, Nikki and I all went into the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve with the task of finding the site that Bob hadn't visited for a decade. Luckily with Bob's permit we were able to drive up to the area where the site is, so we didn't have to walk over 10 kilometres from the parking lot.

The road to get to the Suicide Creek site.

Once we got there, Bob pointed out how overgrown it has gotten since the last time he visited it. He said there used to be a clear path to get to the site, and today there was definitely no clear path. We travelled through thick shrubbery to get to the site, climbing over and under fallen trees and branches. It took us about 15 minutes to walk to and find the site, where Bob gave us a tour of the major features. Among other things, he showed us a cedar plank road that ran into the site, many artifacts that he had put back on the site once they were catalogued by students in past years, the suspected flooring of a mess hall, and a saw that had grown into a second growth tree.

Bob showing Aza a cedar plank road that runs into the Suicide Creek camp. 

Ali standing on the possible floor of a mess hall somewhat covered by a fallen tree.

Artifacts put back on site after Bob was finished working at Suicide Creek.

Saw blade that has grown into a tree. Photo by Nikki.

Finding our way back to the car was a little bit more difficult as there was very rough walking terrain, and no path to follow. Aza stayed at the front of the pack for most of the hike back, coming out with a a couple of wasp stings.

Aza and Bob walking through trees and ferns to get back to the car. 

Tomorrow half of the students will be in the field breaking camp and finishing up some measurements, while the other half are working in the lab on their projects. If there are any student projects that you seem very interested in and want to learn more about, feel free to leave a comment down below and I will try to include some more details about it in a future post!