I decided to make a video about my favorite thing to do (besides archaeology!), hiking. I think the Pacific Northwest is one of the most beautiful areas in the world, and a few moments up in the mountains away from the city is a great tonic for pretty much anything. I try to get out of the Seattle area as often as I can, but life can get very busy sometimes. These are all clips I have taken in the last year or so from some of my favorite hikes. Hopefully I can make some new ones soon!
For my Digital Storytelling project, I decided to go over the various knick knacks I acquired on a trip to Japan. Aside from a longstanding anime and video game obsession, it was also a place where I spent quality time with my father after years personal distance. I dont think we got very far, but it was significant to me, at least.
The trip all started as a plan between me and two other friends, sometime during the December of 2013, and intended as a senior trip. Unfortunately things didn’t pan out, as one friend was accepted on a full ride to Whitworth University for his skilled oboe playing, and must buy a new (and expensive) one for the school band. The other friend waited too long for his ticket and went out of his price range. My mother, as caring as she was, feared for my life in the reputably very safe Japan, so she had my father buy a ticket and accompany me there. In retrospect, the ticket probably could’ve just been handed to my friend, but there was probably something about the ticket price differences and “friend oweing debts” thing that would’ve made it an issue.
There in Japan I acquired a variety of fun knickknacks all related to my hobbies. I have many photos of artifacts and historic structures from not only Japan, but Korea and Vietnam as well. I’m not going to dig any of those photos out.
For the digital story telling lab/ blog post, I chose to tell about how I developed a passion for cooking. With the assignment falling around Thanksgiving break, I knew I would be in the kitchen, and with an influx of free labor (my roommate’s little brother was visiting, so I convinced him to act as cinematographer/ camera-guy), I was able to get decent B-roll. I spent a good deal of time closed up in my closet and covered in a blanket in order to cancel out street and neighbor noise on the voice-over, but all in all, I’m happy with the final product.
For my digital storytelling assignment, I chose to talk about me and my apa’urlaq (Yup’ik for grandfather). He led an interesting and full life which had a huge impact on me and my education. He was one of the first Alaskan Natives to graduate from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Taught himself French, German, and was fluent in several Yup’ik dialects. Unfortunately I did not learn much about my Native roots from him and by the time I wanted to learn, it was too late. This has really driven me to pursue learning about cultural traditions and cultural preservation.
For my Digital Storytelling project, I decided to talk about some of the books and magazines I’ve collected over the years that have shaped who I am today.
As part of the first generation born in America in my family of Philippine immigrants, I have much to be thankful for. I can’t imagine how much more different my life would be if I had grown up in Manila, where my parents came from. My mom’s side, the Villenas, are from Manila, and my dad’s side, the Mangaser side, is from a small town called Tayug in a province called Pangasinan, which is three hours outside of Manila.
Born in 1964 to my grandpa Benjamin and grandma Flora, my dad, Victor Bravo Ferdinand Mangaser (long name, I know) is the youngest kid out of ten children. My mom, Luzviminda Villena, was born a year later, and is the oldest kid out of five from my grandpa Rudy and my grandma Mila.
The Mangasers lived in Pangasinan for a while before moving to P. Halili Street in Manila, coincidentally the same street as my mom’s family. I thought it was significant to mention the street where they came from, because they both still have family that live on the same street, in the same homes. My parents tell me that my mom didn’t like my dad at first, because my dad was apparently in a band so they played music all the time, and my mom didn’t like that. Same as usual, my dad also always teased her.
When they got married, one of my (many) uncles on the Mangaser side, Uncle Ben, had moved to New Jersey and petitioned all of the Mangasers to come to the United States in the 1980s. At around the same time, my dad had joined the United States Navy and my mom was in the process of gaining citizenship, which took around 10 years and two rejections, despite having a U.S. military spouse. I can’t imagine why it took so long, to be honest.
Eventually, I came to be in October of 1998, when my dad was stationed in California. From there, we made our way up to a small town north of Seattle called Lake Stevens. In 2004, my grandma Mila was able to come to the United States and gained citizenship three years later. You’d think that the rest of the Villena family came along too. Though my grandma petitioned the remaining Villenas living in Manila (long ago, I might add), their applications haven’t been accepted (yet?).
I am proud of where I come from as a Filipino-American. Granted, I’m definitely more Americanized as I can’t speak Tagalog or Ilocano (my dad’s native dialect), and growing up I used to be embarrassed to show common Filipino signs of respect, like adding po to the end of every sentence, or performing mano to elders. And growing up in America with parents who grew up in Asia, was (and still can be) difficult. Nonetheless, my family coming to America for a better life for their kids, my sister and I, has always meant a lot to me. It meant a lot of hard work, learning, and adjusting to a new way of life, something I couldn’t imagine doing in my late 20s.
WHERE are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever, One was burned in a mine, One was killed in a brawl, One died in a jail, One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife— All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?— All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One died in shameful child-birth, One of a thwarted love, One at the hands of a brute in a brothel, One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire, One after life in far-away London and Paris Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag— All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton, And Major Walker who had talked With venerable men of the revolution?— All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
They brought them dead sons from the war, And daughters whom life had crushed, And their children fatherless, crying— All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Where is Old Fiddler Jones Who played with life all his ninety years, Braving the sleet with bared breast, Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin, Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago, Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove, Of what Abe Lincoln said One time at Springfield.
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950), Spoon River Anthology. 1916.
For this assignment, my group and I were assigned section 1 of the Cemetery, ” Saint Gabriel”. We distributed the area between the different members of the group, and I was happy of realizing that I had been destined to observe some of the oldest gravestones.
Out of the 16- 20 that I studied, I paid close attention to the material and decoration elements throughout the decades from the 1870’s all the way until few of the most recent ones, from 1997 until 2015; And I did observe, indeed, that as years passed we seem to have less “monumental” style graves (where personalized sculptures are present, such as lambs for children, angels and columns made out of limestone or hand-cult marble) and gravestones become more uniformed, with similar polished marble, and smaller inscribed decorations.
Some of the earliest graves belong to very young people as well; Then it seems as if people’s lives stabilize as the new settler colony establishes it’s roots in the environment. Marie Dizard, passed away in 1904 at 41. Ira S. Mehegan passed away in 1908 at 42. Stella Schoenerr in 1910 at 11 years old, and C.M Columbus at 1916 as an infant. As I stated before in other assignments, it could be due the fact that they were the first or second generation of settler colonials living of this land, in possibly very harsh conditions and not too many resources. Then as we move on through the decades, we could say that the economic crack of 1929 didn’t have any good effect on the health of people, and especially from 1918 – 1919 we have the Spanish Flu pandemic that claimed almost 2,000 lives in a short period of time.
Soldiers coming home from 1st world war had a great impact in everyone’s lives, directly and in an indirect way, bringing diseases that their immune systems couldn’t combat.
When it comes to gender and what kind of gender roles must have been played in those years according to the existence of epitaph, and the kind of vocabulary that is left behind for people to perceive who they were, I see an overall very strong patriarchal dominance in words: If graves are shared by husband and wife, the husband’s name always goes on top of the wife, and her family name is not noted. Even though I might have found slightly more personalized epitaphs of men versus womxn, I still found a pretty evenly distributed adjectives of each individual playing a role in each family: Wife, brother, husband, mother, grandmother, grandfather.
The past couple of weeks our class has been working on identifying glass bottles found at archaeological sites by examining an assemblage recovered from the former tidelands off of the former 6th Ave South viaduct in Seattle. Most of the bottles are exactly what you’d expect: beer bottles, medicine, condiments, that kind of thing. But a couple of the bottles present more of a mystery.
One such bottle is the one I’ve just been calling the “owl bottle.” For the most part it’s not a very exciting bottle, it’s tall, clear, and cylindrical with a wide opening and some light patination, but on the base of the bottle is an owl perched on a crescent moon and the word “trademark” is embossed within the moon. When I first saw this mark I got excited, partly because it’s pretty, but mostly because I figured it would make the bottle really easy to identify. I was very wrong.
The closest I came to identifying this mark was a reference to the logo for Gillet’s High Grade Extract, a company that does indeed use an owl on a crescent moon for its logo. Unfortunately the owl is slightly different, the word trademark is not present within the moon (at least not on any pictures I could find), and the owl is shown on the side of the Gillet bottles rather than the base. I thought maybe that it was a one-off that they had manufactured beforing changing their minds about which direction to go with the logo but there are so many differences that there’s just no way for me to be sure. One thing I do know is I’m going to be looking oddly closely at any bottles with owls I see in the future and maybe someday I’ll know the answer!
This week I was faced with the challenge of interpreting historic glasswares for my Historical Archaeology course. At first I thought this project would be quick, simple and easy. But I quickly discovered this task was in fact challenging and required close observation. Who knew there were so many different manufacture methods and container shapes? The finish, which includes the bore and lip of a bottle, quickly became my greatest challenge. Thankfully the Society for Historical Archaeology has a bottle identification website that is very helpful when you are stumped.
For example, I was examining a bottle that was aqua in color and cylindrical in shape. The base was shallow and concave with a pontil mark. A pontil mark is a type of scar that is left when the iron rod is removed from the bottle. The seam along the base indicates a 2-piece cup bottom manufacture method. Which involves a mold with a separate base plate. Based on my observations I concluded the bottle was used for soda or mineral water. But the finish threw me for a loop because it was a crown shape. Which is typically seen on beer or ale bottles. Thanks to the Society for Historical Archaeology website I was able to confirm the bottle was used for soda. Next I researched the makers mark to confirm the period of use. The bottle was marked with “Fox Trademark J.G. Fox & Co. Seattle, WA”. J.G. Fox & Co. was a beer and soda bottler in Seattle, WA from 1850-1910. I was unable to find any information about marketing and their demographic. But it is clear they were popular for the area where this assemblage was collected. There were several similar bottles in this collection with the same color, shape, and makers mark. Perhaps the site where they were collected was a dump for retailers. Or maybe it was the drink of choice for the nearby population. This will require further research that goes beyond my glassware knowledge and interpretations.
For this week, our class analyzed glass bottles from a dump, and see how they were manufactured, and what they could have possibly been used for. I never realized the differences between bottles and how their shapes and finishes could reveal how they were used. It’s clear a champagne bottle is used for champagne, and a soda bottle for soda, but I never realized why.
Then we characterized the age of all the bottles from the class data, and find the average age of each type of bottle. For example, the median age of beer and ale bottles was 1896 out of 12 dateable bottles. The median age of food containers was around 1900, but out of the nine bottles, only six were dateable. From these ages, we determined the lag by subtracting the average from the year the dump was sealed off, which was in 1929. So the lag between the year it closed and the age of the beer bottles is 33 years.
Then, we were to choose a bottle ourselves and describe what it was used for. As seen below, the bottle seems to be a soda/mineral bottle. It has a crown finish, and possibly had a paper label. However, when and where the item was manufactured remains a mystery as there is no manufacturer’s date or label. Being a soda bottle, it was probably used by an average Joe who decided to drink some soda on a hot day (or a mild day, it’s Seattle).
