Another rainy day...with museums!

April 30th,2014
                Today was also rainy weather so we ventured out in the rain and visited the Little League Baseball Museum and the Taber Museum. The Little League Baseball museum is newly renovated and is very nice. The exhibits were modern and interactive. I thought the museum tour was very nice and I can see many little leaguers have lots of fun in this museum while learning a lot about their favorite sport.
                We stopped at Robin's house to eat lunch and pass time before our next tour at the Taber museum. After we finished our lunch we drove the the Taber Museum and began our tour. Robin lead us around the Indian exhibits as we looked at and talked about the artifacts on display that we could possibly find at the Glunk site. We also looked at the other exhibits downstairs as well as the archaeology lab. The lab in in the basement and is for North Central Chapter 8 to use with their artifacts. While in the lab we got to look at artifacts found at sites around Glunk like the Snyder and Ault sites. I learned a lot today during the rainy weather.

Rainy Day

April 29th,2014
                Today was a rainy day and so we were inside cleaning artifacts. We set up shop in the lounge area between the theater and Pennington Lounge. While we cleaned the artifacts from yesterday we watched a documentary called "Debunking Ancient Aliens". It was a very interesting and productive day.

http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/  

First day at the Glunk

April 28th,2014
              It is a nice breezy day, about 60 degrees F, and sunny. It got warmer as the day went on. I started off the day screening for my partner, Sam. Then we switched off. Sam dug the SW quadrant of our excavation unit, 18. I dug out the SE quadrant. We dug the arbitrary level 1, down to about 10 inches.
              We took a break at noon for lunch. After we ate we went for a short walk along the field because they had just been plowed. After, I kept on digging in my quad. Once I got to the bottom there began a slight change in soil. It transitioned to a lighter clay, yellowish in color. It was also very annoying to cut out all of the roots in our pit. 

James V. Brown Library

April 17th, 2014
                Today we walked to the James V. Brown Library to look at the city directories. Earlier while on a geocaching adventure we picked adresses on Mulberry Street, and I chose 816 Mulberry St.
                 1906, also the same year as the San Francisco earthquake, the city directory has ads for businesses on each pages just like they do today. Henry Landsman lived in this home and was a manager at Larus- Altheimer Co. a Joseph Gray also lived there and he was a breakman.
                 1912, also the year that the titanic sunk, a Melvin R. Clark lived at 816 Mulberry and he was a Stenographer.
                  I continued on every 6 years, and so in 1918 a Harold A. Brown lived there and he was the assistant treasurer of the Northern Central Trust Co.
                  1924, this time the city directory included more ads than previous years. William L. Schaefer and wife Margaret G. lived there and he was a salesman at 233 West.
                  1930, the beginning of the depression, and the directory now has pink pages which are also thicker. Samuel L. Boone and wife Sarah lived there and he was a packer. The names are also now organized by last name instead of first when looking up by the address.
                  1936, in the middle of the depression, there are even ads on the outside front, back and sides of the directory. Peter C. Coleman and wife Mary P. lived here and it was also a home business as Peter ran a detective agency from his home.
                  I picked a directory every six years and each time there was a new resident. Maybe in the city people don't stay around as long. I have lived in my house for 12 years and my parents still continue to live there. Maybe back then people moved more often? The directories also changed slightly each time, mostly in the amount of ads.

Williamsport Cemetary

April 8th, 2014
              Today during class we drove to the Williamsport Cemetery to complete the lab; Gravestones as Indicators of Human Demography. Our goal is to learn how to extract information concerning death rates from the study of tombstones.
Data Collection:
(1) Period 1 1800-1875
(2) Period 2 1876-1945
(3) Period 3 1946-present

Ages:
(N) Neonatal 0-1 yrs
(SB) Sub Adult 2-15 yrs
(A) Adult 16-45 yrs
(O) Older Adult 46-..n

Tombstone types:
(C) cross
(H) headstone
(SP) ground level stone plaque
(SM) stone monument

Data collection

We also walked over to St. Boniface Cemetery to take down last names:
Ziegler                                           Seewald
Younes                                          Crouse
Blitz                                               Katz
Kern                                              Gnilka
Aleberte                                        Kressling
Hartland                                        Yagle
Fischer                                          Kranz
Cummings                                     Staib
Orso
Audet
Juskowiak
Fitzpatrick
Yetter
1) Adults had the highest mortality rates for the first time period.
2) Older adults had the highest mortality rates from the second time period.
3) Older adults had the highest mortality rates from the third time period.
4) Yes, once into the 3rd period there was basically no neonatal or sub adults buried in the cemetery.
5) Life spans were shorter in the first time period.
6) The second time period had many more adults and sub adults, also the first had the most infants.
7) Different living conditions and scientific advances in health care would cause pattern changes.
8) The men had more older adults buried, but a female was the oldest adult I recorded (97). The men lived into their 60's and 70's.
9) In the earlier time periods the women died younger than the men, but in the 3rd the women started to live longer. I would assume this is due to the dangers of childbirth in the first time period.
10) The tombstones were mostly headstones, and then stone plaques. Rarely a stone monument among my sample. Stone monuments indicated a wealthy person, unlike a cheaper headstone, or stone plaque.

New Berlin, Pa

April 6th, 2014
                Today we worked at the church site in New Berlin again. It is a very hot day, high of 80 degrees, the sun is out, and there is a nice breeze coming up off the creek just south of the site. We have a tent set up for shade and we have lots of water. I worked on Shovel test pit 5 today which I found lots of large rocks, brick, white ceramics, and glass. My pit had many large rocks so I expanded it another foot to the east,and
 I uncovered a rock about 3inches down that had a hole in it about 3 inches in diameter. The hole had metal lining like it could hold a fence post.
                 Later in the day, while I was digging in STP 5 the wind picked up and blew the tent we had set up over the top of the monument in the center of the property. The tent knocked over the neighbors cable line (oops!). I had only dug down about 6 inches before this happen, but once we got everything cleaned up I could continue digging. At about 9 inches down the soil changed to dark brown instead of light brown like the soil above it. Overall, we accomplished a lot our fist weekend at New Berlin because we found what we believe to be the footer, and I uncovered what could have been a fence around the church. 

New Berlin, Pa

April 6th, 2014
              We were asked to dig at the site of the first church ediface of "Albright's people". These people eventually form the United Methodist Church, and this site is the first of these churches in the New World. The Evangelical church was first built in 1816 and then again in 1873. Our job is to find the footer of the old church and map it out for a landscaping project they are working on for the site. We simply started digging test pits along the front of the property in line with all the other homes. Robin noticed that all the houses were in line with each other, and so we lined our test pits up with the front of the homes next door. I screened dirt for shovel test pit 1, and we found things like glass, brick, ceramics (white), limestone mortar, and lots of rocks. We did find large stones which we believe to be a part of the footer. Our tests pits were all 1ft x 1ft. I also dug shovel test pit 3 where I found ceramics (red), limestone, footer stones, nails, coal, and brick.

Shovel Test Pit 3 map