Field School 2013

We started field work at French’s Tavern in mid-May, and on May 31^st the field school students and volunteers arrived at the site. This year we have participants from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville;  Middle Tennessee State University; and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Testing Jeter's Field: Hope Smith-Christina Ramazani-Kirstie Durham

The first day of the field school was spent in the classroom and digging shovel test pits in a wooded area on the original Indian Camp property. We didn’t find any 18^th-century artifacts, but students learned the basics of handling a shovel, screening, distinguishing soil changes, and recording information. Over the past two weeks, we’ve continued expanding the block excavation next to the historic tavern and store buildings, where we worked in 2011 and 2012, and testing an area we’ve called “Site C” further north along the field edge. Kathryn Gard, a rising junior in the Anthropology Department, received an undergraduate summer research award from the UTK Office of Research to conduct work at this site, which she’s doing in collaboration with project staff and students. We found a light scatter of 18^th and early 19^th-century artifacts there in 2010 and 2012, and decided to take a closer look this year to try to understand why historic artifacts are showing up in this area.