October at Sustainable Archaeology

Work study student Branwen applying labels

October has arrived with a flurry of activity, the shipment of several skids of our green artifact storage boxes, and some beautiful colours out back of the facility in the Medway Valley. This month we welcomed two new faces to the facility: Western work study students Ilsa and Branwen. Together they have been helping us to advance over one of the bigger hurdles we have here at the facility - the application of over 27,000 labels to the shelves of the mobile shelving units. Each individual box in the facility will be stored at a unique shelf address, which will be recorded in the database via the DM code barcoding system. Each label stores the information for two shelf locations, the "front" box, and the "back" box behind it.

Throughout the remainder of the month we will be preparing to host a workshop at the Ontario Archaeological Society Symposium in Niagara Falls on Saturday October 26th. Hope to see you there!

Sustainable Archaeology: Western is interested in purchasing a 3D printer to use in association with our 3D scanners and microCT to replicate archaeological artifacts. A request for quotation (RFQ) has been published on the Canadian Public Tenders website, MERX. The deadline for submissions is Friday, October 4th.

Notes from the SA: Fall/Winter 2013

The Fall/Winter 2013 edition of the SA newsletter Notes from the SA is out! Click through the pages below to view online, or download directly from Issuu.

Flotation Machine in Action

Featured in a previous post, Sustainable Archaeology's soil flotation machine from R. J. Dausman Technical Services, Inc. was put through its paces today. A team from New Directions Archaeology Ltd. was on site to un-crate and set up the machine, running the first tests out in the Lawson village at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, next door. They will be floating dry sediment samples over the next few days that they have collected from some recent excavations the company has been working on.

The machine requires access to running water for its initial fill, as well as access to a source of electricity for circulating the water in the tank. After its initial fill, the machine recycles water within itself to allow for light-fraction flotation, and heavy-fraction rinsing with an attached spray-hose. The material captured in the screens is then allowed to dry on newspaper before it is packaged, and later analyzed. The fine mesh, as seen in the images below, allows for the capture of tiny floating artifacts, such as tobacco seeds. A courser mesh filters the heavier fraction of sediment, which can include artifacts such as shell, bone and pieces of flaked stone tool.

Collections Repackaging at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology

Over the last week volunteers and work study students at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology have been working to prepare the Museum's collections for transfer to Sustainable Archaeology. The work includes the removal of any cardboard, paper bags, newspaper, and any other non-archival quality materials. When complete, the collections will be held in inert, acid free, archival quality materials, including polyethylene bags, acid-free tissue, and polyethylene foam. The repacking effort is guided by the Sustainable Archaeology Collections Procedures and Practices. The Procedures and Practices document, including standards for collections packaging can be viewed on our webpage. We are currently accepting feedback on this draft document, which be provided directly from the website by clicking the orange "Feedback" button to the left of the page.

Museum volunteers and work study students repackaging collections. Image courtesy of the Museum of Ontario Archaeology.

 The repacking project will continue throughout the summer in the Museum's temporary gallery. Visitors to the Museum are invited to view the students and volunteers while they work, and to ask questions about the process and the collections.

Tweaking and Testing the RFID System

OCR Canada was on-site this week at SA: Western performing "tweaks" to the install of our RFID system. Every box of archaeological material held at the Sustainable Archaeology facilities will be identified by an RFID tag, and RFID tracking technology will be integrated into the SA database. The RFID system will be used at both the SA: Western and McMaster facilities to track the movement of boxes both within and between the two facilities.

The "tweaking" of the system involved testing the range of the RFID antennas at the portals installed at every room entrance and every exit/entrance point in the facility, to ensure that the signal strength of the antenna was strong enough to track the movement of boxes, but not so strong as to incur false reads when a box passes close to, but not through a portal.

Now that the portals have been optimized, we can proceed with testing the integration of the RFID system into the inventory management component of the database.

Ark of the Covenant, or....?

While the large crate and black wrapping material may give off an exciting aura of mystery, we have to  disappoint our fellow archaeologists with the news that the latest arrival at the facility is not the Ark of the Covenant, but in fact a soil flotation machine from R. J. Dausman Technical Services, Inc.