During the field season at New Philadelphia, the field lab is set up underneath one of the tents on the site. It is usually headed by a laboratory supervisor, who is tasked with teaching the students laboratory processes and keeping track of all the artifacts that are discovered. (The image above shows the Time Team America archaeology crew and production staff at the town site in 2008, along with their own operations tents. While our NSF-REU field school field lab is very well supplied each year, we do not usually have a helicopter on hand. Watch for the Time Team America documentary at New Philadelphia on July 22, 2009 on your local PBS station!).

Artifacts collected are placed into paper bags, which have been labeled with all of the information describing exactly where they have come from on the site, including the block and lot within the town grid, the unit number, and the level of the unit. All of this information is very important for keeping track of the artifacts, as knowing exactly where every artifact comes from can help to better describe the everyday activities of people living at New Philadelphia.

Each artifact bag is given a number in the field, one per level of each unit excavated. Once a level is completed and a bag is "closed," the lab supervisor and field school students will begin processing the artifacts. Each object is removed from the bag and cleaned, using bowls of water and toothbrushes for non-degradable artifacts such as those made of ceramic and glass, and just a dry toothbrush for things like metal, bone, and other fragile or very small pieces.

All the artifacts from the same bag are then put on a tray to dry, which is labelled with the same information that was on the bag. Once dry, each artifact is bagged individually (though some similar artifacts can be bagged together), a label with the same locational information is put in the bag with the artifact, and that same information is also written on the outside of each artifact bag. Each individual artifact bag is placed in a larger bag with the same number that the paper artifact bag had, and is then ready for further processing in the main lab.

Do you have additional questions? We are also now on Facebook! Follow this link to join in our discussions.

You can also see our Flickr page for pictures and the opportunity to leave your own comments or questions on them.

In addition, you can follow our updates through Twitter and Tweetizen. Follow this link to scan through our updates, which include news in archaeology as well as about our project, and click here to join Twitter and contribute your own messages.