Guest blog by Heather Calderwood, Archaeology Collections Intern

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

Hello! For the past week I have been working on Faunal Analysis, identifying the kinds of animal remains found at a site. From this information, archaeologists can tell the environment around the site, what the people ate, and where and sometimes how they obtained their food.

Today I have been sorting through levels of Midden collected some 60 years or so ago. Unsorted, the midden looks like a daunting pile of unrecognizable pieces. After some tutelage from Kelley Esh, I’ve learned to differentiate between fish bone, bird bone, rat bone, and other miscellaneous parts of teeth and jaws, (my favorite to find) which I have grown partial to calling “toothy bits”. Fish bone is easy to differentiate from bird bone. Fish bone has a pulled look to it, and bird bone is light and hollow.

I have also been able to recognize a part of the inner ear of a fish formally called the otolith. It is small, and to the untrained eye can be mistaken for shell or fish scale.

The inescapable relationship of dealing with anything from the past is imagining its story.

I’ve learned through all the hours of sorting and faunal analysis that the organic piles of midden samples, collected and sorted were thrown away. The situational relationship of this struck me as particularly interesting. If you imagine the size of the pile, its amount, and its contents, you can learn a lot about a person or a community. Would a small family’s midden look different from a large community? And in what way? Would we be able to recognize it if found?

Today I have worked on two samples from two proveniences. One sample was fuller of fish scales, and the other fuller of fish bone. How is this to be interpreted?

In a few thousand years from now, I’m confident that we in the present, will leave much larger, and conundrum inducing, piles (landfills) of midden behind us.

Guest blog by Linnea Neuber, Archaeology Collections Intern

Me getting pumped for my charcoal adventures

The beginning of anything is always exciting. The beginning of a new book, a new movie, a job opportunity, a vacation—you name it. Anything new always gives an air of possibility; an air of adventure. I possessed this same excitement on my first day as an Archaeology Intern here in the Bishop Museum’s Anthropology Department. I never thought that Indiana Jones was the epitome of Archaeology. I knew that the flash and pizzazz of the movies did not actually exist; but I still never understood the amount of tedious lab work that is behind the mysterious discipline called Archaeology.

This is just my second week of interning here in the lab and my attention to detail has been put to the test, let me tell you. Recently I was given the task of sorting through samples of charcoal from the H-3 highway sites. There were hundreds upon hundreds of tiny boxes and I had to sort every single one of them. At first this task seemed daunting. My mind couldn’t comprehend the amount of tiny little boxes that were laid out in front of me but I just dove in and did my best to hold onto my sanity. The words of a volunteer in the office, Victoria, really helped me through the project though. She told me, “Don’t look at this as a ton of little boxes. Think about the possibilities. Think about how maybe one of those little boxes could change the world!!” I took her words to heart and, instead of focusing on the amount of work, I focused on the actual subject of my project.

You see, inside of those little boxes were pieces of charcoal that have been analyzed by Gail Murakami, who is the QUEEN of Charcoal as Dr. Mara Mulrooney likes to say. She identified the species of flora that were present at each site through these little chunks of charcoal. How incredible and beautiful is that? To archaeologists, even something as small as a piece of charcoal or a fish scale can hold answers to our past and they will do whatever it takes to extract those answers.

On that same note, my amazing fellow interns and I have also been given the task of helping Ms. Kelley Esh with faunal analysis for her doctoral research. This involves us searching through mounds of fish bone for possibly helpful pieces and then re-housing the findings in safe plastic baggies from their previous homes in 1950s Marlboro boxes. I must say that I have now acquired the skill of telling the difference between fish bone and bird bone which I’m pretty confident will impress someone at a cocktail party in the near future. I’m also confident that all of the lessons I have learned and will learn here will help me all throughout my career and life. I’m definitely excited for the next few weeks that I’ll be here in the Anthropology Department!

The SWAT Team: Back row (left to right), Atwood “Maka” Makanani, Captain T.J., Randy Wichman, Canen Ho`okana, Palo Luckett, Kelvin Ho, Tano Tin-Wong, Keao NeSmith; Front row (left to right), Kahelelani Clark, Victoria Wichman, Mara Mulrooney. Not pictured: Stephanie Fitzgerald.

I’ve just returned back from an all too brief four-day visit to the valley of Nu‘alolo Kai on the Nā Pali Coast on Kauai. I was invited to join the Nā Pali ‘Ohana for the first of their annual trips into the valley. The “SWAT Team”, whose annual task is to get rid of the overgrown weeds before State Park staff and volunteers head to Nu‘alolo Kai, heads into the valley each year for a week in May to clear the area of excessive vegetation in order to open up the valley in preparation for the influx of visitors who come in by boat to visit the area. Armed with weed-whackers, chainsaws, and gloves, the crew joined forces to pull weeds from archaeological features and to clear the tall grasses that covered the valley floor. Within a matter of hours, we started to see a difference as walls and platforms came into view. After a few days of hard work, the valley floor was transformed, and we soon turned our camp chairs inward to marvel at the cultural landscape of Nu‘alolo Kai each evening following a hard day’s work.

Over the past 15 years, members of the ‘ohana and State Park staff members have joined forces to care for this special place. Over the past few years, they have worked together to restore portions of the site. Walls and features have been rebuilt, including a hale wa‘a. Over the past few days, damage to restored features such as this one, which is caused by goats in the area, was repaired. We also documented the current state of previously mapped walls in preparation for restoration work that will be carried out in July.

To be able to visit Nu‘alolo Kai was an honor, especially in light of the Department of Anthropology’s history with this remarkable valley. From 1958 to 1964, Bishop Museum archaeologists, including Lloyd Soehren and Kenneth P. Emory, carried out the first systematic archaeological excavations here. Together with some of the parents and grandparents of current members of the Nā Pali ‘Ohana, they excavated the terraced cliff-side canoe shed and habitation complex known as sites K2-K5, where they uncovered thousands of artifacts, including pieces of well-preserved tapa cloth, cordage, fishhooks, and coral abraders, among other materials. The objects from the Nu‘alolo Kai excavations are an important part of the Department’s Archaeology Collections, and these items have provided us with much information about Hawai‘i’s past. These materials are currently the focus of digitization efforts and analysis.

To be able to help to mālama ‘aina (care for the land) and to connect with the ‘ohana of this special place is something that is difficult for me to put into words. This trip has certainly inspired me to make sure that this connection endures, and that our department continues to care for the objects from Nu‘alolo Kai (and elsewhere) with the same level of respect and dedication that the ‘ohana has for their land. Mahalo nui loa to all of the SWAT Team members for a truly unforgettable experience!

Guest blog byTim Zapor, Archaeology Collections Intern

View of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, the famous archaeological site in southwestern Colorado.

I have recently been thinking about what I want to do with my anthropology degree since I am a graduating senior.  Realizing that I still have not a clue what I want to specialize in this got me thinking about why I decided to study anthropology in the first place.  After thinking about this a lot it really helped me decide on a career path.  I thought I would share my story in hopes that it might help others decide what they want to focus on!

When I was a youngster growing up in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado my dad would take me on hikes through the hills behind my house.  Every single hike we would go on my dad would somehow find a Native American arrow head, to this day I have no idea how he was so good at finding them.  At the time I didn’t understand the concept of lost cultures and artifacts and all that jazz, but I loved the stories my dad would tell of Native Americans and their lifestyle before modern times.  I kept all of these arrowheads in a box and would play with them and imagine a time when the prairie was filled with buffalo and Native Americans were using their bows and arrows to hunt and survive.  When I was a bit older, my parents and I went on a vacation to see the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde.  I was fascinated by this amazing structure and wanted to know everything about its history.  As I grew up and went through high school I excelled at ancient history simply because I was fascinated with how people lived in ancient times.  I had heard of anthropology before but had never really thought about making a career in it, or really what anthropologists studied.

When I decided to come to college in Hawaii, I chose to major in marine biology (I have no idea why).  I had been certified as a scuba diver and being from a completely landlocked state, and being a Pisces, I was drawn to the ocean and for a time forgot about my love for history and ancient peoples.  During my time scuba diving I started to dive on shipwrecks, these wrecks were the most amazing thing I had seen and this got me a bit interested in finding underwater treasures.  At the time I had no idea what maritime archaeology was, but I was well on my way to wanting to study it!  After a couple of semesters however, I decided that marine biology was definitely not the major for me (calculus is not my friend).  I switched over to Kapiolani Community College and started taking classes in liberal arts because I had no idea what I wanted to study.  During my time at KCC I had an amazing history teacher that reignited my passion for the past and its peoples.  I decided however that I did not like to deal with chronological dates and all the tedious memorization that goes into being a history buff.  It was around this time that I had a flash back to the days of hiking through the mountains and imagining how Native Americans lived.  I decided at this point to go back to the University of Hawaii and major in anthropology to satisfy my thirst for ancient cultures.  I immediately decided to go into cultural anthropology after taking a horrifying course in physical anthropology.  For the last four years I have been taking purely anthropology courses and I must admit that I love it.  When you find a subject that fascinates you the work is nothing at all!

During my studies I landed an internship at the Bishop Museum in the Archaeology Lab.  This internship opened my eyes to the world of museum management and artifact collections and taught me that this is not something that I wanted to do with my life, but it did pique my interest in the field of archaeology.  Now as a graduating senior I have shifted my focus back in a physical anthropology/archaeology direction and am set to go to Alaska for a month this summer and excavate 12 thousand year old human habitation sites that have never been excavated by students before!  Now I have a pretty clear understanding of what I want to do with my career.  I want to discover peoples of the past and understand them like my childhood self strove to do so long ago.  Without even knowing it I had chosen my life career long ago when I played anthropologist in my backyard with arrowheads I had found.

The moral of this story is: don’t pick your major; let your major pick you!  Pick a field that is interesting to you, something that you don’t have to strive to remember or be interested in.  When something is interesting it has a nice habit of sticking around in your brain.  Pick something that you will love doing for the rest of your life, not something that will just make you money or something that is practical or easy just because.  If you loved something as a child it is a pretty good chance you will love it even more once you study it.