As interns, it is our job to duly assist the Curator of Archeological Collections Manager with the collections processing, cataloguing, preservation, curation, photography, archives, and data management of all artifacts, as instructed, related to their corresponding historic sites. Throughout the course of this internship, we have been involved in assisting with a variety of duties including but not limited to: artifact condition reports, photography, handling, cataloguing and data management, packaging for transport, and retrieval of various artifacts to be conserved from other sites.
When we first started the internship in late January, Kerri was in the midst of beginning a bottle conservation project from the Fort McKavett State Historic Site in Menard County, and this is where our first project began. To assist her with this project, we began to fill out artifact condition reports by measuring, weighing, providing descriptive details as to the decomposition process, color, glass type, as well as identifying fragments, cracks, missing parts of the bottle(s), photographing, and grouping the bottles into categories: conserved and unconserved. After data collection and analysis, we then added the specifics of each bottle to various working spreadsheets for archiving and collection records. Once Kerri chose the bottles for conservation, we created a separate inventory worksheet and recorded those selected for conservation that would become a checklist for CRL researchers and our internal records. To prepare a bottle for transport, we made sure they were carefully wrapped in bubble wrap, encased in foam, and corresponding THC number, and then bound with plastic string twine. Once that was complete, they were inventoried once more, and finally packaged for transit for treatment at Texas A&M’s Conservation Research Laboratory (CRL).
On February 22, 2010, we took a trip with Kerri to the CRL in College Station. CRL stands for the Conservation Research Laboratory of Marine Archeology, which is part of the Anthropology Department at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, and is located on Riverside campus. The purpose of the trip was to drop off a total of 59 artifacts, including a sample of 40 bottles from the Fort McKavett bottle collection. Additionally, we were to pick up the first batch of 5 bottles from the McKavett collection, two rifles, two swords, and a number of other artifacts that they had completed conservation. (All of the artifacts that were picked up during this trip had been previously dropped off by Kerri prior to our internship.)
The building itself was cluttered with projects, heavily decorated with industrial materials, and slightly overwhelming at first; but our initial apprehension was eased when we heard one of Beethoven’s symphonies welcoming us from a stereo in the center of this huge industrial warehouse structure. Even though the lab is all about business and academics, it felt welcoming and almost relaxing in its jumbled and eclectic environment. The whole space was an engaging, chaotic mess of chemical reactions, odd smells, and things we could actually touch!
The Fort Lancaster Collection came to us in boxes from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. For this site, we were responsible for assigning a numbering system to the artifacts, bagging and tagging them, reporting on their general condition and characteristics, photographing them, repacking them into a storage container, and cataloguing all of this information into a spreadsheet to present to Kerri and the rest of the Division. This project made up the bulk of our internship work.
Throughout the course of the internship we have met an array of people, from varying backgrounds who have miraculously come together, bringing their education, training, and expertise working towards a common goal – conservation and preservation of the historical past. Whether it is at the state level, academic level, or in the professional workplace, we have seen groups and teams of people from a myriad of backgrounds collaborating on single projects. Additionally, this experience has strengthened our communication skills, technical and computer application skills, provided us with professional lab training, and have introduced us to a wide variety of historical artifacts that not many people get the privilege to touch.