NCPTT

NCPTT has responded to the emerging need for advanced technology-based archaeology training with "Prospection in Depth," a training series that will be held Sept. 16-20 in partnership with the Presidio Trust at the site of El Presidio de San Francisco. Four instructors and other technical advisors will showcase ground penetrating radar, electrical conductivity/resistivity, and magnetic gradiometry. Additionally, for the first time the curriculum will showcase the use of portable X-ray fluoresence as a cutting-edge geochemical field technique.

For more information contact David Morgan online or by phone at 318-356-7444.

Anna Johnson, a high-school junior at the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts, took NCPTT research to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Atlanta, Ga. on May 11-16. Johnson has been a first place winner in local, regional and state competitions based on the analysis of labeling media for archeological collections using portable X-ray fluorescence analysis. Her work was supervised by NCPTT's David Morgan and Jason Church).

For more information, contact Jason Church.

NCPTT recently provided technical assistance to the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport regarding concerns about the condition of several archeological copper objects associated with the Gahagan burials that were excavated in the 1930s. The objects included a pair of long-nosed god masks, a copper hand effigy and copper/wood ear ornaments. NCPTT’s Jason Church, David Morgan and Mary Striegel, evaluated the chemical makeup of the objects using a portable X-ray Fluorescence Analyzer. They offered recommendations about display conditions and referrals to conservators who may assist the museum.

For more information, contact David Morgan.

The Presidio Trust and NCPTT have agreed to jointly promote NCPTT's "Prospection in Depth 2008," a workshop that focuses on cutting-edge applications of geographic information systems and geophysical technologies for identifying archeological sites and site features. The course is unique in that it concentrates on the interpretation of subsurface anomalies through excavation. The course will be held September 16-20 at the Presidio in San Francisco.

Course information and registration is available on the NCPTT web site.

For more information, contact David Morgan.

The Southeast Archeological Center and Hamline University used funds provided by NCPTT to host a four-day workshop in November called "Heritage Values: The Past in Contemporary Society." The workshop brought together an international panel to discuss how the past is valued and how such values can be defined, measured, and applied to public policy, spending, education, and economic development. The panel featured representatives from the World Archaeological Congress, Register of Professional Archaeologists, Society for American Archaeology, International Council on Monuments and Sites, National Park Service, and numerous prominent research universities and organizations.

For more information, contact David Morgan.

Approximately 90 people attended a NCPTT-funded webinar on high definition documentation in archeology on Nov. 14 and 15. Texas Tech University and the Kacyra Family Foundation’s CyArk High Definition Heritage Network produced the webinar with a PTT Grant. The webinar provided participants a comprehensive understanding of high-definition documentation for cultural heritage, so that they may both conduct basic documentation and provide digital content useful for public interpretation and tourism.

For more information, contact David Morgan.

NCPTT hosted Prospection in Depth, a GPS, GIS, and Geophysical technologies workshop held June 18-23, 2007.

Participants representing federal government, state government, and the private sector traveled from across the nation to attend.

Instructors helped attendees develop prospection skills through classroom training and hands-on field experience in a context of Plantation Archeology.

For more information, contact David Morgan.

NCPTT’s David W. Morgan participated in “Mobile XRF in Museums: Applications for Anthropology and Natural History Collections.”

The workshop was held June 4-5 and was hosted by the Anthropology Department of the Chicago Field Museum.

For more information, contact David Morgan.

Morgan, David W., Nancy I.M. Morgan, and Brenda Barrett
2006 Finding a Place for the Commonplace: Hurricane Katrina, Communities, and Preservation Law. American Anthropologist 108(4):706-718.

Hurricane Katrina and its massive destruction drew attention to the commonplace markers on the landscape that create sense of place for a community. That connection between people and places that is crucial to peoples' sense of corporate and individual identity and heritage.

There is a legal context for sense of place within extant federal preservation legislation. Nevertheless, many places on the landscape that have special meanings for those who live there have been overlooked in the system of federal documentation that has the National Register of Historic Places as its cornerstone.

Grassroots efforts and national media coverage has helped forge a niche for sense of place within the recovery plans and policy emerging in the impacted region. However, at this time it is unclear if this will carry over into practice. In terms of long term policy shifts, remedying the shortcomings Katrina highlighted may require changes to the National Historic Preservation Act and its associated guidelines and regulations, or may entail a new approach altogether.

NCPTT, Washington University at St. Louis (Dr. T.R. Kidder), the University of Minnesota's Institute for Rock Magnetism (Dr. Peter Solheid and Dr. Subir Banerjee), and the Louisiana Division of Archaeology (Dr. Joe Saunders) have teamed up to explore how soil formation might be used to determine the relative age of prehistoric earthworks.

Sediments used to build earthworks break down into identifiable soil horizons over time. Previous and on-going studies show that older earthworks have a more developed soil sequence with a well defined and thick accumulation of clay. Thicker clay accumulations at greater depth indicate a longer passage of time from the initial construction. Comparing the depth of clay accumulations between earthworks may allow the creation of a relative history of earthwork construction, a dating technique that becomes more robust when combined with radiometric dating of organic material within the soil sequence. Because it is possible to study clay accumulation in small diameter solid soil cores, this method offers the possibility of a rapid and relatively inexpensive means of assessing site chronologies that is also minimally damaging to archaeological resources.

Such a study has been hypothetically possible for many years, but the promise of this method is limited because of three factors:

1. minimal investigation of variables possibly affecting clay translocation processes,
2. extant hydrometer sediment analytical techniques require too much time to make translocation studies worth pursuing, and
3. the technique usually results in the sacrifice of the entire core.

This research collaboration will employ a geological and commercial technique never applied for sediment study in archaeology: laser diffraction particle size analysis. Using a laser diffraction particle size analyzer (LDPSA) to categorize sediment size represents a marked technological advance, because, compared to the traditional hydrometer method, the LDPSA process is roughly 90 times faster (circa 30 samples processed every 8 hours) and sample sizes can be as much as 92.3 percent smaller (5 grams, rather than 65 grams). In short, LDPSA makes practical for the first time an effort to develop a new technique for the relative age assessment of earthworks through translocation studies.

Soil cores from non-archaeological contexts in the vicinity of the Poverty Point earthworks, a World Heritage site in northeast Louisiana, are currently undergoing magnetic and laser diffraction particle size analyses to determine if the proposed research is viable. If so, the project will seek permission to continue investigating in archaeological contexts at the site itself.

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1996 Poverty Point: A Terminal Archaic Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley. 2nd edition. Anthropological Study Series No. 7. Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, Office of Cultural Development, Division of Archaeology, Baton Rouge.

Shepard, F.P. 1954 Nomenclature Based on Sand-Silt-Clay Ratios. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 24:151-158.

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey 2003 Surficial Sediment Data from the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and Vicinity: A GIS Compilation. U.S.G.S. Open-File Report 03-001. Available on the World Wide Web at:

http://www.ncptt.nps.gov/Archeology-and-Collections/Research.aspx (Last updated on August 14, 2003).