The wooden sides of the coffin are still visible in the clayish soil where it was laid a century ago, but this coffin and the two next to it in the newly excavated trench are less than 2 feet long.
These were infants or toddlers laid to rest in the Montgomery Square United Methodist Church cemetery, at the intersection of what are now Routes 202 and 309, sometime in the 19th century.
The widening of the roads long ago hemmed in the church and its cemetery, and the congregation has sold the site to build, bigger and better, a few miles away, as churches have been doing for centuries.
But, first, the cemetery's 209 graves have to be relocated to Beulah Cemetery in New Britain, Bucks County. That is the job for about a dozen experts, mostly trained as archaeologists or in forensics, who go over the site with hand tools and a careful eye.
Fascinating article. This is one avenue of archaeology that we had never considered. Makes sense though since it's basically excavation. We are going to look into this more and see how widespread the phenomenon is. (Note: This may require registration. We hit the story on the first try, but when we went back to it, it demanded registration, although that appears to be free)
Archaeologists digging through trash to find Bowling Green history
One man’s trash is another’s treasure, or so the saying goes, and state archaeologists are hoping that trash from the 19th and early 20th centuries will help shed some light on life in Bowling Green.
“This stuff is basically trash – things people threw out, things they lost, things they broke,” said Jay Stottman, an archaeologist with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey. “But this is the stuff that gives us an idea what life was like during this time period.”
A table of artifacts collected at a site near 629 Center St. was on display at a press conference this morning about the Phase II archaeological survey of the site that was recently completed.
Archaeologists identified 18 features, archaeological formations that generally cannot be collected, such as foundations, walkways, pits or holes, on the site, Stottman said.
News from Iraq British School of Archaeology in Iraq
Since its foundation in 1932 as a memorial to the life and work of Gertrude Bell, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (BSAI) has been the main institution in the United Kingdom responsible for organising archaeological fieldwork in Iraq, Mesopotamian Syria and the Persian Gulf. It was funded from private sources, principally the Gertrude Bell Memorial Fund but also a considerable sum deriving from individual subscriptions donated to an Appeal Fund. It first received a Treasury grant in 1947, which enabled it to appoint its first Director in Iraq (Professor Sir Max Mallowan, Agatha Christie’s husband). It carried out excavations in Iraq and Syria before World War II and again from 1948 had worked continuously in Iraq until 1990.
The secretary, Joan Porter MacIver, normally steers clear of politics but she could not help commenting on the shortsightedness of failing to establish a Ministry of Tourism in the interim government announced at the beginning of June. “I can’t understand why that happened. Maybe there is more information that we just do not have. I know that tourism is something they are counting on in the future, especially as Iraq is so important in terms of its historical legacy. The Iraqis have always been very proud of that and it is important to show what the country has to offer – it is the cradle of civilisation.
Eh, not really archaeology, but cool Small ship would be a big discovery
Treasure hunter Steve Libert has spent much of the past three decades scouring the bottom of Lake Michigan for stockpiles of lost gold.
He's never found so much as a nugget, but now the 50-year-old is hinting that he might have struck upon something some would see as far more precious - the lost Griffin, the first European ship to sail the Great Lakes, and the first to sink.
Researchers are dubious that the fabled vessel from the 17th century has finally been found.
"It's possible, but I'd be very surprised," said Ron Mason, a professor emeritus of anthropology at Lawrence University. "If it sank into very shallow water, then it was probably broken up by wave action. If it sank into deeper water, then there would be a good chance of preservation, but it would be very hard to find."
More later.