The Davenports in England, 5-28 update!

The journey of this research is taking two basic routes. First through the sciences, we expect to make discoveries about landscape learning, technology transfer, adaptation, and creativity. At the same time, we are telling the story of the Davenports, their immigration, and the lives they built in their Utah community. A deeply humanistic story, adding to the great pastiche of the human experience.

Key to both these areas of research is knowing the how the Davenports' story started in Brampton, England. This information matters because the scientists and engineers won't necessarily recognize how the Davenports adapted if we don't understand what they knew about potting before they left England. Nor can we understand the world the Davenports lived in and the choices they made in their lives if we don't understand where their story began.

I am very lucky to have found Anne-Marie Knowles during this past year. She is a curator at the Chesterfield Museum and Art Gallery in Northern Derbyshire, England. She has been researching the Davenports in England. After considerable effort, she believes she has really nailed down where the Davenports lived. By studying the 1841 census and comparing the Davenports neighbors with other records, she is pretty certain that they lived in what is now called 'Stone Row.' The name derives from a row of stone cottages that were incorporated into shops that now face on the Chatsworth Road in Brampton. The building in which they lived is now part of a store very near the site of the Welshpool & Payne pottery owned by Matthew Knowles. This is really exciting, because it means that the picture she sent me shows the workroom in that shop, perhaps the very wheels at which Thomas and Sarah worked.

Their house was probably a cottage, but it may have had adjoining structures and looked a great deal like one of these two photos of nearby places. Keep in mind when viewing these pictures that Brampton was a small country town in the 1840s with a few factories and small communities. The buildings would have been in much better condition just after being built:



More that just that, Ms. Knowles thinks that Thomas Davenport probably worked as a thrower, and not just as a laborer in the factory. I wrote before about how the census identified Thomas as a "Pot M." We speculated that it could mean maker or manager. Ms. Knowles thinks that because the same census worker also listed "Pot Lab," meaning laborer, and "Pot Burner," referring to kiln workers, it stands to reason that "Pot M" meant "pot maker."

Since nineteenth century pottery making was a technological system, not just a series of skills or techniques, the Davenports jobs confirm the basis for all of my hypotheses and justifications for the archaeological study. These individuals had no experience building or burning kilns, making glazes, or finding and processing raw clay. Even masterful skills at a process like throwing on the wheel does not assure someone success when every other part of the technical system has changed.

If our luck continues with our discoveries, I'll have much more to say on this subject!

Please help support our research

After some conversations with visitors to the site over this holiday weekend, I realized that I needed to explain our project's funding and the urgent need for support.  This is a public archaeology project. The research is dependent upon tax-deducible gifts from private individuals who discover our work and decide that what we are doing is important and should continue.

Many people seem to be under the impression that a patron or foundation is sponsoring our work at the Davenport Pottery Site in Parowan, Utah.  To be blunt, people think we have a sugar daddy.  This is not true and it is important that people understand how this project came into being- archaeology research doesn't "just happen."

I have cobbled together enough support to run the field school.  Several partners or patrons are helping, mostly through in-kind donations of logistical support.  I thought I would give readers an idea of what it takes to make a field school happen:

The Iron Mission State Park Museum is making most of our photocopies and letting us bring the students there for lectures.  In addition Todd Prince, the park director, and Ryan Paul, the curator, have both given guest lectures or led field trips, teaching the students about Iron County prehistory and history.  Todd has extensive experience in Utah prehistory and stands ready to help us with the consultation process if we discover any prehistoric remains.

The City of Parowan and The Dixie National Forest worked together to get us a waiver so we could camp in the Five Mile Picnic Area at no cost.  The camp or hotel fees are a big part of field work expenses, so this support was critical.  Parowan City staff have also been very helpful because they found us a secure storage location, give us access to potable water, help with equipment for specific field needs, and are keeping up the campground.

The archaeology faculty and staff at Southern Utah University's Archaeological Repository lent us a bunch of equipment for our field camp, including some extra tents, cooking gear, and potable water tanks.  I am in debt to both Barbara Frank and Emily Dean for their help.

Utah State Parks will lend us some equipment and help with back filling and earth moving.

The Matheson family have given us permission to work on their land and promised to donate the artifact collection to the state.

Michigan Technological University awarded me a small grant that will cover about 1/2 of the vehicle costs from the motor pool.  The Department of Social Sciences is also supporting some of the students during their time here, through small scholarships or hourly pay, and helped cover some of Chuck Young's travel costs to come out and bring the geophysics equipment. Chuck paid the balance out of his pocket.  The department also let me teach the field school class, despite the fact that enrollment was well below the cut-off point that makes a class viable.

The Register of Professional Archaeologists also provided a scholarship award to the project. This helped students to enroll who might not have otherwise been able to afford to attend.

The Utah Humanities Council awarded State Parks a small grant to help us tie the exhibit and the excavation together in some public programs.

That is how we made the field school happen.

The analysis and write up of this excavation and the ongoing research are separate issues.  We will return to our lab at MTU with tens of thousands of artifacts to analyze and research to complete.  Without any donations or support, I will spend the next ten years studying the collection and writing a manuscript, working on occasional Sundays and during future months of August.  I will not return to the field in Utah again until that is finished.  It would be unethical for me to collect more excavation data without reporting on what we'd already gathered.

With your gifts of support, however, we could finish the analysis in a year, help the Iron Mission Museum design their replica exhibit of the Davenport Pottery for the Ironworks Homestead, and set up another study in Parowan or another pottery site.  The key to making this happen is gifts in support of student scholarships and analysis.  As you read in the list above, lots of organizations can give in-kind and logistical support. None of the organizations with which I've partnered can support students working in the lab.  We are looking for partners to join us in our research effort by supporting students and other direct costs.  The partners could be communities, businesses, or private patrons who wish to ensure that the archaeological study of Utah's historic-era pottery heritage continues before more of the sites are destroyed.

The way that the Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program at Michigan Tech operates, we find sponsors that support our students while the faculty donate our time to various research projects.  We collaborate in this way.  I don't get paid out of donations from the public-- the university already pays me to teach students and do research, so I don't need money for my salary.  We use your donations to support graduate and undergraduate students and direct research costs (gas for the truck and van, Neutron Activation Analysis and other archaeometry, etc.)

Here are some things for which I need immediate support:

If I can find support for Jessica Montcalm, she can work on this project full time as her MS thesis, instead of waiting on tables or holding another part time job while finishing her studies- M.S. student tuition waiver, 2009-10-  $12,000

To get the lab work going, we need funds to support undergraduates working in the lab.  They help Jessica and me with the cleaning, cataloging, refitting studies (pottery jigsaw puzzles), and other analyses-  Undergraduate student lab staff- $5,000

Vehicles cost us money when we take them from the Motor Pool.  Right now, I am on the hook for gas and rental costs- $1,500 

The science costs money.  Neutron Activation Analysis, analysis of animal bones, charcoal identification, LA-ICP-MS all cost about $20, $50, or $100 per sample- Scientific testing:- $2,000

Every little gift helps!  Your gift of $20 lets me buy one scientific test.  For example, I might be able to compare the chemistry of Thomas Davenport's raw clay and his finished products, or study the charcoal to determine what type of fuel burned to heat the kiln.  

Gifts at any level are tax deductible.

Donations can be made to a special account at the Michigan Tech Fund by clicking here. Individuals who wish to give money to organizations in Utah can make donations by sending checks to the Iron Mission Museum Foundation (Davenport Pottery Project), 585 North Main, Cedar City, Utah 84720-1079.

I offer my deepest thanks our past supporters, including the students who invested their time and finances in the research.

Math problem, Part 2

Several people sent me comments about my math word problem.  In the original post, I asked people how to calculate the diameter of a circle when I only had a chord.  I set up the word problem with this diagram of the kiln wall:

We thought about the problem a bit, but couldn't recall any formulas for a circle that didn't require one to know the radius, diameter, or circumference as terms of the equation.  I did remember that the solution involved making two right triangles along the arc.  While eating my peanut butter sandwich, I decided that I could use the two right triangles to get a quick and dirty solution.  I knew I could draw the two triangles at scale and cut them out.  Then I could use a set of circles drawn at the same scale and slide the triangles over the concentric circles until I found the best fit.  This sort of the way we calculate the rim diameters of ceramic fragments.

We all knew that our math friends would remember the equations, however.

Pete and Mark Dice phoned in an answer.  Pete promised to send me his figures by email.

C. Crosse commented on the blog.  She said, "Given that c is a straight line between two points on the circumference of a circle--X and Z--which is called the cord, the curved line would be called arc XZ. Assuming you know c (not XZ) and m--the height of the arc created by the chord--then the formula would be:

r = (m² + ¼c²)/2m

Pete Foss made a comment on the project Facebook page:

"I found a circle calculator here: 

http://www.1728.com/circsect.htm 

that says your kiln was 1.88 meters in radius. 12 feet in diameter."

He added, "Hooray for Google!"  

Indeed.  The page that Pete sent includes a useful illustration:

I'd still like to hear from one of my friends that are math teachers! We have marked out a circle of 12 feet on the ground surface. As we excavate more of the kiln, we will be able to get more accurate measurements.  Family oral history said that the kilns were "about 14 feet across" and that there may be three or four of them all in the back yard.  We'll see what we find out. 

May 28, 2009- update.

I have heard from my friend Kristin Z. Cook, who teaches math at a high school in Milwaukee. She ran the numbers and said: "I am assuming the perpendicular segment you drew bisects the 1.8-meter segment.  If that is the case, then I calculated the radius to be approximately 1.8759 m, the diameter to be 3.7517 m, and the circumference to be 11.7864 m."  She promised to scan and email me her a page that showed her work.  She is a math teacher, after all!

My colleague Steve Walton also worked up a solution, but not to be outdone by others, he formatted a diagram and included it in his email:

So there is pretty wide agreement that the kiln is between 12 and 12.5 feet in diameter.  Pretty close to the 14 feet diameter recorded in oral histories and given the inaccuracies of our measurements, we need to leave a little wiggle room in our conclusions.

If you are curious, here is how I figured out my estimate.  I drew copies of sets of right triangles using a scale.  The right triangles split the chord evenly in half.  I new that I could make a second set of overlapping triangles on a second overlapping chord, then line up both sets on a scale drawing.  If I projected their short side as in the drawing below, I knew they would intersect in the middle of the circle and allow me to measure the radius!  I always liked geometry proofs more than algebraic ones....