Lecture in Salt Lake City, Friday, May 7th.

I am giving a lecture next Friday at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City.  I will speak at 7 P.M. in the museum auditorium, and their new exhibit of pottery will be open.  The exhibit grew out of the Potters of the Gathering show from last year, but is a new show curated by Kirk Henrichsen.  They will have several archaeological objects on view from both the Utah Pottery Project and Utah State Parks collections, as well as antiques from the Gary and Jill Thompson Collection and the Church History Museum's own collection.

I will talk about last summer's excavation of the Davenport Family Pottery Shop in Parowan.  The museum asked for my abstract and title, and this is what I sent:

Ten Years of The Utah Pottery Project: Archaeological Questions and Answers.

After more than ten years of preparation, Timothy Scarlett led industrial archaeology students last summer to undertake the first major archaeological excavation of a pioneer-era Latter-day Saint pottery shop. In an illustrated lecture, Dr. Scarlett will overview the scholarship of Utah Pottery Project and explain the last summer's discoveries at the site of the Davenport Family Pottery Shop in Parowan, Utah (1855-1888). The results of that excavation and ongoing laboratory research open a fascinating window into challenges and struggles faced by Utah's nineteenth century potters and their families.

Congratulations to Jessica Montcalm

On Thursday, April 22nd, Jessica Montcalm successfully defended her Master's Thesis in Industrial History and Archaeology, which she titled: A Burning Question: Archaeology at the Davenport Pottery and Technological Adaptation in the Mormon Domain.

While she has some revisions and editing to finish, her committee was impressed with how much she had learned and accomplished over the last year.  Many of this blog's readers will recall that Ms. Montcalm was the assistant archaeologist during the excavation and field school last summer.  She volunteered her time over the past year both processing and cataloging artifacts in the lab, while also supervising other volunteers in the lab.

I will discuss some of her findings when I speak at the Church History Museum's exhibit opening early in May.

Congratulations to Jessica for all her hard work.

This is the penultimate abstract:

The archaeological excavations and the associated artifact analysis at the Davenport Pottery in Parowan, Utah, serve to inform questions of landscape learning and technological adaptation in unfamiliar geographic settings. Thomas Davenport and his family immigrated to the Utah Territory from Brampton, England, in order to answer the call to gather issued by the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He, along with thousands of other settlers moved into and occupied a geographic region unknown to their prior experience. Studies of prehistoric peoples' colonization of unfamiliar landscapes indicate that unfamiliar and challenging geographical surroundings hinder successful or long-lasting colonization. By contrast, the experience of the Mormon settlers, including Thomas Davenport, provides a unique situation for inquiry in which a large population made use of exhaustive planning and active restructuring of unfamiliar geographic settings, resulting in successful and lasting settlements. Analysis of the archaeological remains associated with the kiln at the Davenport pottery shop provide physical evidence of one man's learning in an unfamiliar landscape. The remains also highlight cultural preferences as a basis for technological choice, and lend to an adaptive technological discussion regarding the form of kiln used by Davenport.

News update: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good news:

Now that the academic semester is almost at an end, I will spend a bit of time on the project preparing some artifacts for a new exhibition!  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Church History Museum is going to install a version of Potters of the Gathering in their lobby.  The exhibit will open May 7th.  Kirk Henrichsen is using pottery to remind people about nineteenth century foodways and domestic life, to explore the ideal of self-sufficiency in Latter-day Saint communities, and to show people how important archaeology is as a tool to increase our understandings of the past.

Mr. Henrichsen has gathered together some new material for this show.  He will be using most of the important objects from the original exhibit- including the Thompson Collection, the Utah State Parks Collection (including the Deseret Pottery artifacts), and the Utah Pottery Project collection.  He has also found some other cool items to include, such as a Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Association Medal from the Territorial Fair, which will be displayed with some award winning pots!  It should be a great show and will be the first time most of this material has been exhibited to the public in Salt Lake City.

The museum has invited me to give a talk at the opening and I am excited to see the new installation.

The bad news:

Both organizations declined the proposals I'd written seeking funds for more work.  One of the grants would have supported additional fieldwork. The other sought funds to allow more experiments to develop and refine ceramic rehydroxylation dating (RHX dating).  No matter how many times it happens, reviewers rejections always sting a little, even when accompanied by encouragement to "revise and resubmit."

Either way, the lack of support funds means that we will box up the artifacts and put more of the analysis on hold for the summer.  I'll be co-teaching the 2010 Industrial Heritage and Archaeology Field School this summer at the site of the Cliff Mine in Keweenaw County in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I'll continue to collaborate with my friends in Materials Science.  Since Patrick Bowen was awarded two grants for undergraduate research, we will move as far ahead as we can investigating reydroxylation.  I think he will work with Jarek Drelich to characterize the clay and ceramic used by the Davenports and try to figure out the significance of the different water-absorbtion processes at work in ceramics.

We'll reflect on the reviewers' comments for a few days and then meet to plan the strategy for the rest of the summer and the fall term.

Michigan Tech Alumni Event!

A Day in the Field with MTU’s Industrial Archaeologists!

The Department of Social Sciences is pleased to invite Michigan Tech alumni and friends to visit our archaeology dig in Parowan, Utah. On June 20th, please come to see the important discoveries, including the well-preserved remains of one of the first non-Native pottery shops in the southern expanse of the Utah Territory.  Alumni and friends could put these events at the center of a weekend trip through Utah's beautiful and historic Color and Canyon Country!

MTU faculty, students, and volunteers are excavating the site of the pottery shop established by Thomas and Sarah Davenport in 1852. These English factory workers spent nearly a decade struggling to solve technical problems, then operated their shop successfully over forty years. MTU excavation teams have unearthed several extraordinary features, including well-preserved building foundations, heaps of kiln failures, and the first English-style updraft kiln ever excavated west of the Mississippi river.

After touring the site and talking with project team members in Parowan, the group will meet at the Iron Mission State Park Museum in nearby Cedar City, Utah. At the museum, Dr. Scarlett will take the group through the exhibit, Potters of the Gathering: Clay Work in Early Utah. The exhibit includes more than 200 objects, both antique and archaeological, along with DVD video and audio programs that illustrate the successes and failures of the immigrant clay workers.

Following the pottery exhibit, the tour will consider the history of iron mining and smelting in Southern Utah. MTU industrial archaeologists and Utah State Parks staff will preview the museum’s new exhibits about residents’ efforts to make iron in the 1850s, including a full-scale replica of the blast furnace. Then the group will head west of Cedar City to Old Iron Town State Park, an industrial ruin where workers smelted iron in the 1860s. The furnace, casting house, charcoal ovens, and other industrial ruins are potential sites for archaeological fieldwork during the summer of 2010 (pictures here).

Schedule and Rendezvous:
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Open visits to excavations at the pottery site and local museum in Parowan, Utah.
Site location: 75 West 100 South, Parowan, Utah, 84761

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM: Guided tour of Potters of the Gathering at the Iron Mission State Park Museum in Cedar City, Utah.
Museum location: 585 North Main St., Cedar City, Utah 84720

2:30 PM: Overview of iron industry history, view of exhibits, caravan departs.

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM: Visit to Old Iron Town State Park.
From Cedar City head west on Hwy U-56 for approximately 20 miles. Turn south onto Old Iron Town Rd. Travel this gravel road for approximately five miles to the ruins located on the left hand side

Michigan Technological University Alumni and Friends can register here.

Project in the News- NPR Story

This morning, KUER 90.1, Utah Public Radio, did a wonderful story about the Utah Pottery Project, the Davenport family, and public archaeology.  Jennifer Napier-Pearce spoke with some of the people involved in the exhibit and archaeology project.  

I hope lots of people will come to see the exhibit before it closes at the end of July.  I also hope people will come to visit us during the fieldwork.  Unlike so many archaeology digs, this one is right in downtown Parowan across the street from the Old Rock Church Museum and just about 15 minutes from Cedar City and the exhibit at the Iron Mission State Park Museum.

As I wrote once before, this is a public archaeology project.  No federal or state regulations force people to participate.  The people who help with the project do so because they care about the history of Utah's clay artisans, contributing either as researchers, as landowners, or as donors and patrons supporting field and lab work and student research.

The Davenport Pottery Site in Parowan is an excellent example of the collaborations.  After a decade preparing for this dig, we'll study the site to develop a detailed understanding of how the Davenports built their kilns, prepared their clays, formed their wares, and so on.  With the newly discovered information, we will design an operating replica of the pottery shop that can be built at the Iron Mission State Park Museum to tell the one of the stories of Iron County's industries during the nineteenth century.

Our work relies upon the tax-deductible support of individuals who care about the Utah's history and heritage.  We need donations right now to support lab analyses, supporting student researchers in their contributions to the study.  Donations can be made to either the Iron Mission State Park Museum Foundation or on-line to the Michigan Tech Fund, into an account designated for the Utah Pottery Project.  Click here to make a gift:

https://www.banweb.mtu.edu/mtu/mtf/giftform.xsql?desig=E01112-Utah%20Pottery%20Proj-DeptSocSci-Scarlett

Exhibit Opening

We opened Potters of the Gathering: Clay Work in Early Utah on Saturday, May 2.  I am very grateful for all the help and support of everyone on the team at the Iron Mission State Park. We finished the last bits of exhibit preparation that morning, and my wife Sarah even joined the work team, despite the fact that she was on vacation from her job at the Chipstone Foundation and Milwaukee Art Museum. Sarah helped polish the acrylic boxes that cover the vitrines and then helped Ryan aim lights in the gallery.  

I will post more quality photos of the exhibit as I get them.  I was pretty busy Saturday night talking with visitors, so I didn't take any pictures myself.  

We designed three main areas for the exhibit. The first area has the feel of a natural history museum.  This area includes wall panels with text, photos and a touch-screen DVD, as well as cases of archaeological artifacts and an ambient audio program.  This section of the exhibit explains the process of pottery manufacture, with emphasis on the English factory experience.  It also presents the archaeological research into Utah's clay industries.

This case, as one example, is full of mold fragments from the Deseret Pottery site in Salt Lake City.  Utah State Parks staff and groups of student volunteers did archaeological salvage at the site in 1977.
We built the second area of the exhibit in the style of an art museum.  This section includes several cases that gather together examples of pottery that the maker stamped or signed.  This is the largest collection of signed and identified pieces ever exhibited.  In addition, this area also includes a large table display, pictured below, where a number of unsigned objects sit together.  We hope that this display will encourage people to consider the aesthetic and technical variety in these objects and the similar diversity in the artisanal community that manufactured them.

The picture below shows the Eardley vitrine, which contains many of the Bedson Eardley and Deseret Pottery pieces in the show. In the background are panels that explore the push forces that encouraged potters to leave England for Utah.

Our third area is in the style of a history museum.  We explain the potters' quality of life in this area, including health issues, business practices, and the social construction of identity.  The displays, which include two pioneer period rooms, a peddling wagon, and a black-box theater, interpret objects using text panels and photographs and two separate audio programs.

Some local media covered our opening:

TheSpectrum.com from St. George, Utah.

I do hope lots of visitors will come to see the show while it is open at the Iron Mission State Park Museum.  We have had some inquiries about hosting the show in other cities around Utah, but there is no guarantee the show will travel.  The exhibit includes about 300 objects, most of which have never been exhibited before.  It is certainly the largest collection of nineteenth century pottery ever gathered together.  Besides all the objects, there are two audio programs, an ambient audio atmosphere, a touch-screen DVD with video segments, and dozens of historic and modern photographs.

After our opening, my wife and I took the remaining two days of her vacation time to do some camping and hiking in the desert's spring beauty.  The wild plants are in bloom here, the days are warm, and the Coal Creek has swollen with snow melt runoff.  My thoughts are increasingly turning to the fieldwork at the Davenport Pottery site.  I'll post more exhibit pictures as soon as I get them, but will be write more soon about the field school and excavations!  The students are on the road from MTU and should arrive in a day or two.

Object Photography

I spent a bunch of time today working with Benjamin Howe of Mishap Studios, taking photographs of pottery objects that will be in our exhibit, Potters of the Gathering: Clay Work in Early Utah.  We were taking photos for the small catalog booklet that Utah State Parks plans to publish for the exhibit.  These are a preview of the photographs in the book and the objects that will be in the exhibit:

These are some of the items that will be on display May 2 through July 31.  

Darrin, Ryan, and I finished the display panels and have taken them over to Rainbow Sign and Banner  to be printed and mounted on thick foam core board.  I spent some time this afternoon priming vitrine bases again.  I expect to spend more time tomorrow painting them black and perhaps we'll be able to start putting objects into cases by the end of the week!

Weekend Exhibit Work

I'm having a busy weekend! Gibb finished the vitrine bases in the shop. Larry and Murph are painting them. Ryan and I went up to Sandy, near Salt Lake City, to meet Gary and Jill Thompson. We completed condition reports on his collection and moved them down to the Iron Mission Museum.



I offered to help the museum staff with some public programming activities. We hosted a big group of Boy Scouts. I taught them about Paiute pump drills. It was a nice break from exhibit preparation and field school planning.

The Iron Mission Museum keeps making progress on several other projects. Below is a photo of the replica the museum is building of the blast furnace that residents operated in Cedar City in the 1850s.  The wood frame will be covered with a facade of stone, which will give it the look of the old furnace at  much lest cost.  The interior of the furnace will be filled with interpretive exhibits.  It should be done by early June.




My next post will be about the field school schedule.

Mobile blog post

Potters of the Gathering, Part 2

Why choose Potters of the Gathering for our exhibit title?  This is a great question and one which, as several of my colleagues pointed out to me recently, I completely neglected to explain in my post!

Leonard Arrington identified "The Gathering" as one of seven ideals that leaders of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints developed to guide their community during the organization's first 15-20 years.  According to Arrington, the ideals were:

1. Gathering souls from Babylon to Zion, through active mission programs.

2. Establishing nucleated villages.

3. Consecrating private property to the Church and having it returned in stewardship for the community.

4. The redemption and beautification of the earth.

5. Frugality and economic independence from Babylon.

6. Group unity and cooperation

7. Equality among members

As Arrington explained, these were ideals that infused government policy, economic development, public discourse, and individual social action.  Like all ideals, people engaged with them in many different ways, but all of the ideals touched the potters and clay workers during their lives.

In terms of our exhibit, The Gathering was among the most important ideal.  Many of the potters came to Utah in response to calls to serve missions settling news town and "building up home industry."  Their experiences were very different within that context, but the principle of the gathering tied many of them together.

My academic interest is in the material practice of the gathering and how individuals experienced and contributed to it in their communities.  The idea of The Gathering also has powerful theological meanings in Latter-day Saint communities, both historically and today. While the principle of the gathering lost its literal and material meanings by the end of the nineteenth century, the Saints kept their personal, theological, and doctrinal connections to Israel.  I am not a scholar of theology, so I'll refer interested readers to Elder Russell M. Nelson's speech The Gathering of Scattered Israel from the 2006 General Conference in Salt Lake City.

My co-workers and collaborators here also chuckle that this exhibit will be the largest gathering of Utah-made pots ever assembled.  I appreciate the double entendre!

Potters of the Gathering

I have mentioned the exhibit we have been working on for the Iron Mission State Park Museum.  Well, the final logo is done!  Our exhibit, Potters of the Gathering: Clay Work in Early Utah, now has a title, logo, and color scheme.  Check it out: 

The design is by Darrin Fraser, the creative director at Mishap Studios.  Their website is here:

http://www.mishapstudios.com

Darrin is working hard on the rest of the design.  Ryan and I passed him the exhibit checklist and our layout of the exhibit.  I gave him this scaled floor plan:

The plan map is hard to read at this scale, I know.  But the exhibit will be about 2,200 or 2,600 square feet in total.  Darrin has been visualizing the entire thing for us: color schemes, layout, and design.  He came to our meeting with a 3D visualization of the 2D plan I'd drawn, which really helped me see what he was imagined (below).  He's been great and I'm excited to see more of his design work.

The exhibit will tell the story of the Utah's nineteenth century immigrant potters, using archaeological artifacts, antique objects, historic photographs, drawings, DVD video, and audio recordings.  We have pieces from the three largest collections of antique Utah-made pottery, along with digital video and historic images on loan from The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery and the Staffordshire Film Archive.  

I am very excited as the exhibit is coming together.  Gib the carpenter has most of the vitrine cases built and the rest of the staff are painting them now.  The wall panels will go to the printer this week so they can be printed and mounted on boards. 

The exhibit will be open from May 2nd through July 31st, so that means that it will be open the entire time we are excavating at the Davenport Pottery site.  Since Parowan and Cedar City are only about 20 miles apart, visitors will be able to travel back and forth between the gallery and the excavations.  This should give us the ability to layer our interpretive strategy from the site with nuances from the exhibit, and the reverse will surely be true since we have reserved one vitrine case for "The Discovery of the Week."

Things are coming together nicely and excitement continues to build!