Season 3 Volunteer Opportunities!

Updated: 2 May 2019

So, after a bit of a delay, the IABP is back on! We will be returning to the field this coming summer (July – August 2019), and are looking for volunteers! I’ve posted this FAQ about the project for people who might be interested. Please contact me (davidrcn@uw.edu) if you are!

What is this project?

The Issei at Barneston Project (IABP) is a historical archaeological investigation into the lives and experiences of first-generation Japanese American sawmill town workers and their families, as told through the archaeological record. Its focus is the Japanese Camp at the Barneston Townsite (45KI1424), an archaeological site that is located on the Cedar River Watershed. Through a combination of archival, oral historical, and archaeological evidence, I am attempting to understand how the Nikkei residents here endured and negotiated their social positions in the context of racism and labor inequalities.

The fieldwork portion of this project is taking place this coming summer. We will be conducting shovel test surveys and excavation of key areas at the site. These areas have been identified through prior surface survey and archival research as areas likely to have intact archaeology. Hopefully, this archaeology will tell us something about the kinds of cultural practices and choices made as part of these workers’ daily lives.

“Nikkei”? “Issei”?

Issei refers to first-generation Japanese immigrants ands Japanese Americans. Nikkei refers to all individuals with Japanese heritage, both in the United States and in other countries (like Canada). The workers and adults in the community were all Issei, but they had families and children, and so I usually refer to the community as a whole as the Nikkei community. I’ll have a blog post sometime in the future on language use, where I’ll better explain my choices in terminology.

What are your goals regarding the fieldwork?

Our fieldwork will focus on identifying and collecting information from various spaces in the community, including residential and communal areas as well as spaces associated with the interior and exterior of structures. We will also focus on ground-truthing a historic map of the site, which is going to be used to provide some of the context necessary to interpret the archaeological remains.

When will you all be going out?

Approximately July 1st through September 20th, though those dates might shift slightly.

What will we do as volunteers?

That depends largely on when and how long you volunteer for. We are planning on doing forest clearing, limited surface collection, shovel testing, and excavation at various points throughout this period. People who volunteer longer will have more chances for a greater variety of work.

If you are coming out for particular needs, such as having to fulfill a field experience requirement for your degree or for the sake of your job, then we can chat about timing to make sure you get as diverse an experience as possible.

Is there any minimum time we need to volunteer?

Nope! One day, two days, a week…it’s up to you! There are limits on how many volunteers I can bring out at one time, though I don’t think that will be a problem.

Who should volunteer?

Anyone interested in experiencing archaeology or who has an interest in archaeology, really. This project is particularly well-suited (but definitely not limited) to those who:

  • Have had a field school and need additional field experience.
  • Have had instruction in archaeology but need field experience.

Other individuals are more than welcome, but those with some knowledge of archaeology will probably get more out of the project.

Do we need any prior field experience?

Nope! I’m happy to take people with no prior field experience. You will probably get more out of it if you have some knowledge of archaeology, but it’s not a requirement.

Is there anything else I should know?

This is an archaeology project, so you can expect some kind of physical labor (at minimum, standing for fairly significant stretches of time) in somewhat difficult conditions. The site is heavily overgrown, and we will have to maneuver along fallen trees on an uneven surface. We are on a historic site, and that can carry with it safety issues, though these should be easily handled through dilligence. In the next few weeks, I will circulate a short project guide which will include safety information to those who are interested in volunteering.

I can only take a limited number of people at a time. In order to protect the watershed’s ecology and Seattle’s fresh water, Seattle Public Utilities limits how many volunteers I can have out at a time. The site is actually located within a few hundred meters of one of Seattle’s water sources! Anyway, I haven’t had to reject anyone in the past, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future.

Sounds good! What do I need to do to learn more and/or sign up?

Just email me, davidrcn@uw.edu, and let me know how I can contact you. Phone or Skype would be preferable, but I can do email as well. I’ll contact you back, and we’ll go from there!

Also, feel free to come back to this post every few weeks or so, as I’ll be posting additional updates here.

Technical Problems

Dear reader,

My apologies! We are experiencing some technical problems due to the move to the UW Sites network. I should have these resolved within the next week or so!

–David

Surface Collection

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At the end of the 2016 field season (see Parts One and Two of our posts on pedestrian survey), Hollis and I set up a grid for surface collection on an artifact scatter in the northeastern-most area of the site. Surface collection is a tried-and-true method of identifying archaeological sites and areas-of-interest in historical archaeology. Very often, much of what we are interested in historical archaeology it is on, near, or predicted by what is on the surface. This is particularly true here, where the site isn’t very old and there is probably not a lot of dirt being deposited on the ground over time. Our goal for this surface collection was to get a sample of artifacts from the site. We could use this sample to justify future funding, as well as to plan out our laboratory analysis techniques (for when we recover more artifacts!).

Scan of our field forms showing an idealized grid.

Figure 1: Scan of our field forms showing an idealized grid. Scan by David Carlson.

Our surface collection strategy involved setting up a 2-meter grid in a 20- by 20-meter area. This gives us 100 quadrats, or grid squares, to investigate (Figures 1 and 2). Each square is given a unique identifier, so we can make sure to keep all artifacts we find in it together. There are two reasons for picking this method. First, it means we don’t have to decide what to point plot. One way of collecting surface material is to take a GPS or total station and record either every artifact you find, or centerpoints for collections of artifacts. Recording every artifact is time consuming, given that most are going to be small fragments. It also means you either have to use a total station or a really good GPS unit, as most GPS units will not have enough precision for what you want. Recording clusters of artifacts is easier, but more arbitrary (how do you define a cluster?) and is difficult to visualize and analyze in a GIS. By collecting everything within a quadrat, we avoid dealing with some of these issues.

Figure 2. Gridded and cleared area of surface collection. Photo by David Carlson.

Second, it lets us systematically clear the surface. For each square, we scraped the surface with trowels and 1/8″ screened the surface debris. We scraped the surface to clear away mold, tree and root debris, and loose material. Once we could see dirt (or humus), we stopped (Figure 3). The reason for this is that much of the site is covered not only in living plants, but in not-yet-decayed plant remains. So even if you clear all plant growth (which we also did), your surface artifacts may still be obscured by recent plant matter. Setting up grid squares allowed us to systematically clear each square in its entirety, revealing a great deal more material than we would have found otherwise and giving us a better estimate of the below-surface distribution of artifacts. It also meant that when we screened the material we cleared (to find any small artifacts caught up in it), we knew where in space the screened material came from and had control over how we collected it.

Figure 3. Hollis Miller, Sam Hordeski, and Joyce LeCompte-Mastenbrook help clear a quadrat. Photo by David Carlson. Please contact David before using, reproducing, or altering this image.

This survey took a week or so’s worth of time, but was extremely valuable in both confirming the date of the site and in justifying future research. I may post more about the results of this collection in the future, as long as I can figure out a way to do so without talking too much about the artifacts we found (see the FAQ for further explanation).