At Salisbury University, the Department of History currently provides a B.A. and M.A. in History and is home to an Anthropology track in the Interdisciplinary Studies B.A. In 2002, the History Department held a successful archaeological field school at one of the earliest plantations on the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland. Museum studies technologies and an archaeology laboratory exist at the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture, which is fostering relationships with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Salisbury University also has a strong GIS program in the Department of Geography and Geosciences, which supports heritage research across the Eastern Shore.
Proposed Programs: Salisbury University would expand undergraduate courses in cultural anthropology and archaeology to allow for a stand-alone Anthropology major. Further staff would also be added to the Nabb Center to serve their growing collections and clientele in both the research and public communities.
Investments Toward IMPART: A revitalized anthropology track has six majors and ten minors, and some 148 students are being reached each year in anthropology classes. The first field school, in 2002, had 14 students. In collaboration with the Library of Congress, the Nabb Center and the Ward Museum's folklife program has established a summer folklife training institute. The Nabb Center's mission includes archaeology, folklore and history. With the Ward Museum now affiliated with the University, expanded museum studies classes are planned, the only ones available on the Eastern Shore.
Digital Conversion of the 1877 Atlas
During the spring of 2005, two student interns in the Department of Geography and Geosciences were funded through an IMPART assistantship to create digital data for Dorchester County, Maryland.
Digital Conversion of the 1877 Atlas
- Partner: Salisbury University
- Student: Suzanne McArdle and Lisa Robinson
During the spring of 2005, two student interns in the Department of Geography and Geosciences were funded through an IMPART assistantship to create digital data for Dorchester County, Maryland. This project sought to convert Dorchester County election district maps in The 1877 Atlases and Other Early Maps of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to a digital format.
Preparation for the digitization of the districts and their features began by scanning the thirteen election districts in Dorchester and saving them as TIFF files. The interns were then able to add the images into Geographic Information Systems software, where they could be used as a guide for data capture. ArcView 3.3 was the GIS software used to digitize a variety of features and their attributes. A total of 3,324 structures and their attributes were collected, including owner name and structure type (i.e. mill, silo, church). Line features collected included roads, railroads, rivers and district boundaries, and corresponding annotation. The digital product created by students will be included in our existing American Origins Project: 1877 Atlas website, http://geoweb.salisbury.edu/website/1877.
Archaeological Teaching Collection
The purpose of this project was to convert the substantial number of unprovenienced prehistoric and historic artifacts currently in the care of the Nabb Center for Delmarva History and Culture into a formal teaching collection.
Archaeological Teaching Collection
- Partner: Salisbury University
- Student: Natasha Jones and Alexander Beebe-Giudice
The purpose of this project was to convert the substantial number of unprovenienced prehistoric and historic artifacts currently in the care of the Nabb Center for Delmarva History and Culture into a formal teaching collection, which will be used to provide students working in the archaeology lab with comparative examples and as a teaching aid for courses and outreach presentations. Ms. Jones focused on the identification, cataloging, and final organization of the artifacts. Mr. Beebe-Giudice was primarily responsible for curation, and was trained in basic artifact identification and cataloging.
Ms. Jones first organized the artifacts into logical groups in order to prepare them for cataloging. She and Mr. Beebe-Giudice then discussed how to arrange the collection to make it accessible and meaningful for future students, following that with an exploration of options for storage and display of the artifacts. In addition to these tasks, they also labeled the artifacts, created identifying tags for groups of similar artifacts, and developed an Access database for the catalog.
Working with this specific collection of artifacts was both challenging and valuable for Ms. Jones as it had many items she had not previously worked with, including 19th century ceramics and diagnostic shards of prehistoric pottery. Cataloging many of the artifacts required becoming familiar with a wider range of sources for identification of these item types, which expanded her ability to identify a larger array of artifacts from a longer time period.
The collection and the process of organizing and preparing it for use as a teaching tool offered additional challenges. Some of these challenges centered on the methods and technology used in preparing them, such as the problem encountered with the labeling ink and base coat. Solving this particular problem required communication with the Maryland Archaeological Conservation (MAC) Lab.
Overall, the planning, implementation, problem solving, and communication that this project required provided hands-on experience and the opportunity to translate abstract academic knowledge into real-world situations. As such, it was a significant addition to Ms. Jones' and Mr. Beebe-Giudice's undergraduate educations and good preparation for graduate studies and eventual professional work in the field of Archaeology.
