Hello, my name is Paul R. Gliniewicz. I am currently an undergraduate student, majoring in Anthropology, at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Following graduation in the spring of 2013, it is my intention to enter graduate school with a focus on Historical Archaeology. It is my eventual goal to work in the field of archaeology as well as to teach archaeology at the university level.
Being little more than a virtual novice to archaeological methods, I took the lab course that followed the Hassanamesit Woods Project Field School. Without question, I believed that this course could only help me in my progression towards a future in professional archaeology. While all of us taking this lab course were given a thorough overview in each aspect of laboratory artifact analysis, cataloging, and preservation, each of us was assigned a focus area on which to concentrate and write about for the Fiske Center’s Blog. The focus area assigned to me was the analysis of all of the washed and catalogued stoneware which has been uncovered at the Hass Woods site over the past seven years of excavations and acquiring a minimum vessel count for the collection. A minimum vessel count is basically what it states that it is: a minimum count of the vessels present in a given collection. Rather than guessing at a maximum number a vessels contained within it, one can say that there were at least “x” many vessel at a site with virtual certainty. This process also included the labeling of all of the sherds of this collection and attempting to reassemble the vessels if possible, in order to learn more about them and their relationship to the site and the Nipmuc people who inhabited it.
Melissa, one of my lab-mates, working hard to affix the prepared context labels to each of the stoneware sherds.
The first step in this process required the collection of all of the washed and catalogued stoneware pot sherds for the Hass Woods Project. This step was accomplished ahead of time by our lab instructor, Heather, with an intension of saving us some valuable time in the process. The next step involved an analysis of each sherd of stoneware and a separation of them into the least amount of vessels which they could possibly be a part of. We first separated them by obvious color, style, and design differences and then focused on all the base and rim portions present within each grouping to determine the minimum amount of vessels present within a given group. After this was done, a further close analysis of each sherd’s particular characteristics was done on the body pieces in order to determine which grouped vessels they could be a part of. A reasonable amount of care needed to be taken during this step because within any type of ceramic there can be much variation in the characteristics throughout it, such as color, thickness, shape, design, and decoration, not to mention any alterations done over its particular lifetime of usage or from the more than two-hundred years of time spent within, in this case, New England soils. After this very time consuming step was competed (mostly because I am simply a novice to all things ceramic), the established minimum amount of vessels, seventeen in all, were methodically described and cataloged on paper before being bagged separately. Following the conclusion of this step, the now bagged sherds were taken and labeled with their respective context numbers so that their archaeological origin would not be lost in the future, especially during the mending process.
Among other items, we were able to partially mend this Jackfield Teapot, which dates to the later half of the 18th century. Perhaps it belonged to Sarah Muckamaug, or Sarah Burnee?
I personally found the process of labeling my least favorite activity, primarily because I found it nearly impossible for me to write in miniature on tiny pieces of 100% cotton paper and then affix them to, in some cases, almost as miniature ceramic sherds. However, my classmates helped me with this step and we finished in time to begin the process of actually mending the stoneware sherds into (hopefully) a single vessel once again. As tedious as it was, this was my favorite step in the process, but as one of my classmates so aptly pointed out: to “put together a puzzle without a picture” can certainly be frustrating, and it was understandably not her favorite thing to do.
Myself, (temporarily, but undoubtedly, overwhelmed and confused) working to indentify and separate the stoneware sherds into groups for their minimum vessel counts.
I truly enjoyed working on the Hassanamesit Woods Project for the five weeks of field school and the two weeks of the Directed Study of the artifacts in the archaeology lab at UMass/Boston. Seeing the artifacts, which I and my fellow ‘aspiring archaeologists’ had so painstakingly uncovered at the Hass Woods site, cleaned, processed, and cataloged in a laboratory environment, was an experience well worth the price of admission. To be given the opportunity to partake in a further hands-on study of this portion of the material culture of the Nipmuc people was truly an honor and a privilege. In addition, to be able to reassemble the broken pieces of a stoneware vessel, which someone had used until it was unfortunately broken, was a great feeling. As I was doing this, I certainly felt as though I was participating, in a small way, in helping to reassemble a small part of a much larger history.
By Paul Gliniewicz