Nine college students have been working throughout the summer to dig up historic artifacts in Malden. The students and faculty finished their dig on Thursday and hosted a dig celebration.
One man’s trash can be another man’s treasure – or at least that is the case for this West Virginia State University (WVSU)-led archeology team. The project’s field director, Mike Workman, said they are looking into the life of salt baron John Hale through objects that he might have thrown out more than 150 years ago.
Hale owned and operated a salt mine in Malden that was one of the largest salt works in North America at the time, according to the West Virginia Encyclopedia.
“Well, most artifacts are in people’s trash. Just throw aways, just take what people throw away today,” Workman said.
He said they are able to piece together the things they find on these digs to fill in information about the past.
“Archaeology is pretty much the same as history, except the documents are found in the ground. And you know, we’re still building a chronology of the past learning about people from the past,” Workman said.
They have found things like a gold coin, a baby doll arm and a pig femur. All things that give insight to the wealth in the area at the time and what kinds of foods people were eating as well.
Workman said the gold coin in particular gave insight into how much wealth John Hale had during his ownership of the salt mine in Malden.
“You know, seeing a gold coin in 1853 It was really something, and the fact that it was just laying around, what was it doing laying around?” Workman said.
They also found things that pre-date colonization of the land. Things like arrow heads made from natural flint stone by Native Americans. Workman said Native Americans used it as a place to hunt the animals that would frequent the natural salt lick that would later become Hale’s salt mine.
“When Native Americans came in, they used this as a hunting area, a hunting camp,” Workman said. “They had this Kanawha black flint, just right up on the mountain. So they could quarry there and come down here and shape their arrowheads or spears, and then hunt down there.”
Hayden Kreitzer, a student at Shepherd University and one of the nine students working to uncover West Virginia’s history, said at first he didn’t find the work meaningful, but then:
“The more I’ve dug, the more I’ve just learned about this place, and the history in general, the more I realize how much power these things have,” Kreitzer said. “And how much you can just tell about the way people lived just by looking at the small fragments of their lives, say just 130-150 years ago.”
This is the second year that WVSU has hosted the dig at the historic Hale House in Malden. Organizers say this year’s work was made possible with a grant from the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation. They are hopeful they can continue this work next summer.
