Carrie Atkins

Squeak, squeak…creak, creak…thud, thud…thuwmp.  The sounds of my bunkmate getting out of bed accompanied the early morning stillness. The bunks we are sleeping in tend to squeak and creak if you even so much as move a toe and these are the sounds that fill the nighttime silence.  Luckily, no one has been snoring and the only buzzing sound that could be heard came from someone’s alarm in the other room. 

A slight mishap with one of the bunk beds.

It was 6:50 am on Tuesday, Day 2, of our PAST field school and as I lay there awake, I thought about Dr. Corbin’s “lecture” from the previous night.  She had showed us pictures of the material culture from two boxes recovered from a steamboat wreck (the Bertrand) and we had to determine their owner(s) and discern the socio-economic status that we could imply.  It is this that I enjoy most about archaeology—gleaning as much information as you can from one artifact, figuring out how artifacts fit together within a collection and even across collections, drawing together procedures and knowledge from many disciplines in order to piece together a puzzle which, most importantly, can tell us stories about the lives of many common and prominent people from our past.  (It refers back to the idea that everyone has a story if you take the time to listen.) 

However, before studying artifacts, they must be catalogued and documented and thus we found ourselves back at the NOAA Center finishing up the documentation on the artifacts believed to be from the Adelaide Baker.  Working hard, we got through the final boxes of iron artifacts and, just before lunch, we started photographing the collection.    Although we were working fervently, we only had one camera, with one tripod, and one grid to set up.  It was going to take us awhile to get through all 65 artifacts.  So when we were back at our home for lunch, Dr. Sheli proposed that we concoct another “photographic center” and she gave us a shower curtain, rope, and duct tape, which is often the most important item of many contraptions.   It was first suggested that we duct tape the second camera between two tables to serve as a tripod, but as this was Seraphya’s camera, he quickly vetoed this idea.  The idea of creating a sling from the rope was quickly left behind as we sought something that may be less “dangerous” for the camera.  In the end, we did not use the rope or, surprisingly, even the duct tape.

Recording more Adelaide Baker artifacts.

Instead, an hour later, we were back photographing with the two camera stations: one camera on a tripod and the other in a cardboard box with a hole cut out for the lens and flash.  This rested between two tables positioned atop the shower curtain, which was now fashionably decorated with a 2” grid. We were able to get through the rest of the artifacts expeditiously and with time to spare, we finished photographing the large admiralty anchor and the two gudgeons (part of the system that connected the rudder to the stern).

Dr. Sheli O. Smith gives a talk on ship construction. This knowledge will be critical when the field school students begin recording an actual wreck later in the week.

Because we finished early, we celebrated by stopping off at Diver’s Direct and we found ourselves like kids in a candy store –albeit a very expensive candy store.  After we had pulled ourselves from the store, most of us a few dollars down, we spent the rest of the afternoon doing varied activities: some people entered the collection’s information into a database; we also learned how to take a panorama of the back parking lot near the dive shop and down by the dock using only a compass, a circle, a person (or tripod) and of course a camera. 

Field school mascot Jack and Stephanie Allen review review historical accounts of wrecks in the Florida Keys.

Dinner tonight is chicken and vegetable foil packets and they smell wonderful.  So far we’ve had a wonderful time, learned more than we are able to remember, and it’s only Day 2.  Tomorrow we take to the water in the afternoon and personally, I have a lot to look forward to as I explore the career of underwater archaeology.