ASV Newsletter 1

Newsletter of the

ArcheologicalSociety of Virginia

June 2007Number 185

The mission of the Archeological Society

of Virginia is to promote the archaeology

& anthropology of Virginia & adjacent regions

From the Desk of President MikeWilke

It is early May as I write this article for the JuneNewsletter. I do think that spring has finallyarrived even here in Highland County. I havehad to mow the lawn twice already and since theday has been wet, it almost looks like I can seethe grass growing outside of my window. Thetrees are budding, the early harbingers ofimminent warm weather (colts foot and bloodroot) have come and gone, and now a variety offlowers including the dogwood trees are in fullbloom. However, I am not totally convinced andwill wait a while before putting my house plantson the front porch.

I attended a meeting of the Nansemond Chapterin Portsmouth on April 20 and enjoyed theopportunity to share in George Ramsey'sbirthday celebration. It was a pleasure meetingthe members of the Chapter and I thank them fortheir hospitality. Since the Board meeting wasscheduled for April 22 and the round trip fromhere in the mountains was over 500 miles, Istayed with Teresa and Dwayne Preston for theweekend. I would like to thank them as well fortheir gracious hospitality and the Saturday visitto Jamestown.

I will be visiting the Wolf Hills Chapter meetingon May 18 and look forward to spending theevening with the Chapter members. As I notedin the previous article, I would like to visit witheach of the ASV Chapters during my tenure ofoffice and share some time with you all. Contactme to set a date, the title of my presentation is"You Are The ASV".

At the ASV Board meeting at Kittiewan, excitingnews was announced. Sarah Speiden whopassed away recently bequeathed to the ASVmonies to be used as scholarships to graduatestudents majoring in archaeological fields. Acommittee was appointed including some

ASV Newsletter 2

members who are currently working ongraduate degrees and others who haveattained those degrees to establish criteriafor potential applicants. This fund will benamed the Sarah Speiden Scholarship Fundin her honor. The money received will beinvested so that the scholarships will beawarded yearly as long as the ASV existsbeginning in 2008.

At Kittiewan, progress on the PlantationHouse is moving forward with publicopening expected in the near future. Thetimber sale has been held which willprovide much needed funds to this end.The timber tract was cruised by aprofessional forester and it wasrecommended that a tract of approximately40 acres of mature timber be harvestedbefore disease and weather decrease itsvalue. Patrick O'Neill and Bruce Baker withASV members have been conducting anarchaeological survey of the tract prior toharvesting. Your help on this effort isneeded.

As I noted in the last issue of theNewsletter, your help is needed with thesales of ASV publications including the2007 Trilogy. Volume One is available andVolume Two is currently being printed.Contact your local bookstores to provideoutlets for its sale. A local presence will notonly increase sales but should also increasethe membership rolls of your Chapter.There are a lot of people out there whohave an interest in archaeology but do notknow that there is an outlet for that interestlocally.

I hope to see many of you at the last season atthe Keyser Farm Site scheduled for July 23rdthrough August 5th. I will also be attending thesurvey and testing project scheduled for October29th through November 3rd at Chippokes StatePark in Surry County and hope to see you thereas well.

ASV President Mike Wilketakes elevations at KeyserFarm in July 2006.

ASV Newsletter 3

From the Office of StateArchaeologyby Mike Barber, State Archaeologist

There is a lot of archeology going on inVirginia. We have academia, housemuseums, CRM groups, ArcheologicalSociety of Virginia members, Department ofHistoric Resources, state agencies, federalagencies, and who knows who else doingarchaeology in the Commonwealth. Theproblem is that no one knows exactly whatis going on, where our research is taking us,or where we lack data. We need to developa comprehensive understanding of wherewe are and where we are going.

The Department of Historic Resources isdevising 2 strategies to attempt to correctthe situation: a comprehensive statearchaeological plan and research designand a DHR / Academic Summit. The first,the state plan, has been in the works for ayear. In fact, the concept was hatched bythe Council of Virginia Archaeologists morethan a decade ago but lacked adequatesupport to come to fruition. DHR, incooperation with COVA and ASV, has nowtaken the lead to developing this plan. Theoverall concept calls for 2 volumes, one tooutline the current level of ourunderstanding of the archaeology ofVirginia and a second volume to outlinemanagement practices. The first volumewill be organized by time period and byregions and will provide a comprehensive,synthetic rendition for each.

Beginning with Paleoindian and endingwith the twentieth century, the chronology

will be broken down at the regional level ifappropriate. Currently, 3 chapters (Paleoindian,Middle Woodland, and Contact) are beingwritten and will be ready by May 2007. Theywill stand as prototypes for the remainder. AsDHR has entered into an agreement with ASV tofund the chapters, the time invested in thevolume by the authors can be minimallycompensated for. Anyone interested inauthoring a section and/or chapter or joining theState Plan Committee should contact me as soonas possible.

State Archaeologist Mike Barber confers with BillJohnson at the Keyser Farm site in July 2007.

ASV Newsletter 4

The second strategy to deal with thearchaeological information gaps will be theDHR / Academic Summit. TheArcheological Society of Virginia hasgraciously extended their annual 2007meeting in Williamsburg to 4 days. Theadditional day, Thursday October 11, willbe dedicated to presentations given bymembers of the academic institutions inVirginia with archaeological programs as totheir theoretical approaches, faculty,research interests, students, publications,CRM capabilities, etc. (See the schedulebeginning below). These presentations willbe followed by papers by DHR members asto the activities of Collections, RegionalOffices, and Review and Compliance tooutline what the state is going. Finally, apanel discussion will close out the sessionwith an overview of what challenges faceacademia focusing on campus preservationplans.

If the day proves fruitful, it may be followed bysimilar sessions with house museums and CRMfirms discussing their programs. These strategieswill prove fundamental in developing thearchaeological research design and directing thedata gathering in Virginia over the next decades.

I always go to a quote by Ted Reinhart in arecent COVA newsletter (Virginia Archaeologist,Vol. 23 No. 2, pp.29, 2006) in stating that:

"We are in the golden age ofAmerican archaeology."

I believe that to be true and we need to takeadvantage of this golden situation to provide aroad map for the future of Virginia archaeology.

Department of Historic Resources / Academic SummitSession I of the ASV Annual Meeting

Theme "Virginia Before 1607"October 11, 2007Ramada Inn 1776

Williamsburg, VirginiaPreliminary Schedule

Morning Session:9:00 - 9:25 Introduction (Michael B. Barber, DHR)9:25 - 9:40 Washington and Lee University (Bernard

Means)9:40 - 9:55 James Madison University, (Clarence R. Geier)9:55 - 10:10 Radford University (C Clifford Boyd)10:10 - 10:25 Longwood University (Brian Bates)

10:25 - 10:40 Break

Virginia Archaeologyis the best!

ASV Newsletter 5

Washington and Lee University students excavate on theschool’s historic Colonnade in May 2007. Lee Chapel isvisible in the distance.

10:40 - 10:55 University of Mary Washington (Douglas Sanford)10:55 - 11:10 The College of William and Mary (Martin Gallivan)11:10 - 11:25 Sweet Briar College (Lynne Rainville)11:25 - 12: 40 University of Virginia (Jeffrey Hantman)11:40 - 11:55 Virginia Museum of Natural History (Elizabeth Moore)

11:55 - 1:00 Lunch

Afternoon Session:1:00 - 1:15 Winchester Region Preservation Office (Robert Jolley)1:15 - 1:30 Roanoke Region Preservation Office (Thomas Klatka)1:30 - 1:45 Capital Region Preservation Office (Christopher Stevenson) 1:45 - 2:00 Tidewater Region Preservation Office (E. Randolph Turner/David K. Hazzard)2:00 - 2:15 SHPO 1st Floor (Dee DeRoche)2:15 - 2:30 SHPO 3rd Floor (Joanna Wilson)2:30 - 2:45 Wrap-Up (Michael B. Barber)

2:45 - 3:00 Break

3:00 - 5:00 Campus Preservation Plans: Panel Discussion(Carter Hudgins, Moderator)(Panel: David Brown, Ben Ford, Laura Galke, Joe Jones)

ASV Newsletter 6

ASV Archaeology Around Virginia

Update on the DHRArchaeological CollectionsVolunteer Program From information submitted by DeeDeRoche

The DHR Archaeological CollectionsVolunteer Program continues to attractvolunteers that are helping processimportant Virginia archaeologicalcollections, notably from GloucesterPoint and Keyser Farm. Sara Leonardalso provided the volunteers with aPowerPoint presentation on historicceramics. The photographs on this pageshow the dedicated volunteers workingon a recent weekend in the Spring.

Irma and Al Pfeffer are cataloguing artifacts fromGloucester Point.

Katie Duff and Summer Chaffman cleaning findsfrom Keyser Farm.

Elizabeth Bollwerk, Kimberly Stern andNatalie Ross sorting and counting GloucesterPoint artifacts.

ASV Newsletter 7

Northern Virginia ChapterAdapted from the chapter newsletter The Datum Point

Volunteers have been working with MikeJohnson to survey a Riverbend County Park,which borders along the Potomac. Three days ofsurvey in April led to the identification of adozen new prehistoric and historic sites. Twoquartz Selby Bay-like points and a rhyolite

Piscataway point suggest a Middle Woodland occupation (ca. 500 BC toAD 500) within the park. Historic finds include a 19th century stonequarry and a 1960s fishing park visited by current volunteer and thenteenaged Scott Silsby.

The Upper James River ChapterSubmitted by Bernard K. Means

Steve Bilicki of BRS Consulting presented a lecture onunderwater archaeology and Michael Gregory, Washingtonand Lee graduate from 1983, talked about his field workamong the High Hollows adjacent to House Mountain herein Rockbridge County. The ASV certification work in thelab was renewed in early June after a hiatus to deal withWashington and Lee’s spring excavations, much to thedelight of our chapter members. One chapter member notedthat “I find myself going slightly stir crazy without doingarchaeology on a rather regular basis.”

The Wolf Hills Chapteradapted from the chapter newsletter

Points of Interest

Several people braved a cold March day to visit asite that had been excavated by members of theWolf Hills chapter. The Cornelius site containedcultural occupations dating from the Paleoindian(notably Clovis Points) to the Late Woodland, thelater represented by a palisaded village site datingto around 1200 A.D.

Riverbend quartz point

A High Hollows household on HouseMountain.

Dr. Charles Bartlett speaking to Wolf Hills chaptermembers about the Cornelius site.

ASV Newsletter 8

Current ASV Officers

President: C. Mike Wilke legypt@htcnet.orgPresident-elect: Patrick O'Neill patrickoneill@erols.comVice President: C. Neil Manson nielmans@comcast.netSecretary: Stephanie Jacobe aureus@usa.netTreasurer: Bill Thompson twarchitects@livenet.net

For more information on ASV go to:http://www.asv-archeology.org

ASV members of all ages helpexcavate at Keyser Farm onJuly 28, 2006.

Send newsletter submissions to:Bernard K. Means, Ph.D., RPADepartment of Sociology and AnthropologyWashington and Lee UniversityLexington, VA 24450or via e-mail at: meansb@wlu.eduDeadline for Submission to June Newsletter is August 15!!!