Submitted by Sammy Smith ([email protected])
SGA President Dennis Blanton continues to blog about the laboratory studies now underway following this summer’s fieldwork into a very early historic site in south Georgia.
This was the fourth season of field work. Dennis writes:
It’s sobering every morning to peep into my lab and see the tabletops and counterspace no less clear of bags. We hauled a few hundred parcels of artifacts and special samples back from the field and they’re waiting in patient ranks for the next phase of work to begin. But I’m happy to say, after nearly a month now, that we’re poised to plunge into the job of processing and analysis.
And this is where the real work of archaeology begins. Fieldwork is a vital step; it remains the most traditional way we collect raw material for study. But all of the grubby potsherds and scraps of bone and even the glittering glass beads would maintain an uncomfortable silence if we neglected to wash them, catalog them, subject them to close examination, and then compare them with material from other excavations. This is a way of saying that, yes, the artifacts have a story to tell, one that surely will take unimagined twists and turns, but they tend to give up their secrets rather grudgingly.
Posted online on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009