On this West Virginia Week, we spend some time in the Eastern Panhandle and learn about a new Battlefield Park, hear from a Harpers Ferry author and explore the unknown future of the John Brown Wax Museum. We also travel to Morgantown to experience a Silent Book Club, and then south to Logan County to check out the hopes riding on the inaugural Governor’s School for Tourism.
On this West Virginia Week, we spend some time in the Eastern Panhandle and learn about a new Battlefield Park, hear from a Harpers Ferry author and explore the unknown future of the John Brown Wax Museum.
We also travel to Morgantown to experience a Silent Book Club, and then south to Logan County to check out the hopes riding on the inaugural Governor’s School for Tourism.
In other news this week, we learn the latest on the health of the coal industry in West Virginia, check in on a campaign to improve foster care, hear from the state Board of Education meeting and visit an archeological dig in Malden.
Liz McCormick is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.
West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick and Maria Young.
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.
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.
“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.
Scattered across the state, often just under the surface veneer of West Virginia, buried evidence exists of communities and times gone by. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Moundsville at the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex. The curators there work daily next to a giant Adena Indian burial mound, preserving artifacts found over the years throughout the state.
The Mound in Moundsville
If you drive into Moundsville, across from what looks like a giant castle that is the former state penitentiary, there’s this swollen grassy mound. It kind of looks like a giant land turtle with a couple of big trees and flat, stone stairs winding up its back. The mound stands almost as tall as a 6-story building and from the top you can see for miles. It’s one of the largest conical mounds in the United States.
“The mound was built over 2000 years ago,” said Andrea Keller, the Cultural Program Coordinator at the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex. “Roughly 250 – 150 BC by people that archeologists call the Adena people. They are prehistoric native Americans.”
Keller gives tours, among other things, where she tells visitors all we know about this mound. Which …is surprisingly little.
“We do know it was used as a burial mound,” she said, “It had two main tombs, one with one individual and one with two individuals – two rather elaborate tombs for just three people.”
Keller explains how the family that owned the mound in 1838 decided to excavate it with the business idea of creating a museum with the artifacts they’d find – one you paid to go through.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
gaming stones from Fayette County ~1500 AD
“They were going to charge 25 cents for an adult and half of that for a child,” Keller said. “So with high hopes they excavated from the base, and when they got towards the center, they found that first main tomb with the two individuals.”
She says they would have found a hollowed-out tomb, rotting logs, two skeletons, shell beads, maybe some ornaments…
“And not a whole lot else. They were probably kind of disappointed.”
Keller says they “would” have found these things, but the truth is… we really don’t know for certain what they found 177 years ago. Much of what was excavated has been lost over the years. Including the skeletons.
History of the property:
250-150 B.C. Construction of the mound took place in successive stages.
1838 The first recorded excavation of the mound took place.
1909 The state of West Virginia bought the mound in the early 1900s (with some help from area school children).
1978 The Delf Norona Museum was constructed next to the mound. This large, modern brick building with pyramid-shaped skylights is meant to be an architectural tribute to prehistoric times.
2007 Construction of the archaeological complex began.
Modern Archeology
The archiving skills of the time were less sophisticated than they are today. No one understands that better than Amanda Brooks and Heather Cline, curators at Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
turtle shell cups (circa 1480s), found in Fayette County
“The majority of our artifacts that we’ve rehoused are all stored up in this area,” says lead curator, Heather Cline as she stands in a 9,600 square foot addition to the museum. The archeological complex was designed to house West Virginia’s artifacts. All of them.
“We have movable shelving units, climate controlled, humidity controlled, temperature is also regulated.”
This is the archaeological curation facility for the whole state of West Virginia. Cline explains that modern archeology isn’t all tomb-raiding and dodging ancient booby-traps.
“In archeology,” Cline explains, “10 percent of the work is done in the field, 90 percent is in the lab.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Heather Cline (middle) and Amanda Brooks (right) work daily in a lab to preserve and study artifacts found in West Virginia – huge collections of artifacts excavated from sites throughout the state. Many sites, both historic and prehistoric, were excavated in the 60s and 70s and have been moved around the state over the years. But in the 1990s the state’s legislators decided to build a more permanent and dedicated home for the state’s artifacts. In 2007 they broke ground.
The Lab
In the archeology lab, Cline hovers over a desk with trays of objects.
“I’m laying out some artifacts from a Confederate Civil War camp, excavating in 1963, by Clifford Lewis along with youth science campers. They excavated parts of camp in Pocahontas County which remains pretty untouched from 1861 when it was built there.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
elk horn tool (circa 1500) found in Fayette County
Buckles, spoons, knives, buttons – Cline carefully is going through what was collected in the 60s, categorizing and entering each object into a database. She says historic artifacts are most interesting to her, but there are interesting prehistoric artifacts, too.
Bird bone flutes, ceramic gaming stones, porcupine quill needles, musical instruments made out of rib bones, elk horn tools – many of these artifacts came from the prehistoric Mount Carbon village site from Fayette County. Last year Cline and Brooks cataloged 43,000 artifacts from the site – most of which date back to the late 1400s – early 1500s.
Rehousing History
“We spend the majority of our time rehousing old collections,” Cline said. “We’re rehousing 2000 boxes. It’s a slow process getting everything up to archival standards so that they’ll be around for researchers.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
fossil-tool found in Fayette County
“Rehousing” is when experts like Cline take excavated artifacts out of their original paper bags and place them into standard, acid-free boxes and plastic bags that will better preserve them for researchers in the future.
Last year Cline and Brooks cataloged 43,000 artifacts from the site – most of which date back to the late 1400s, early 1500s. The entire site was packed into 100 boxes that it took the two curators about a year to rehouse. There are hundreds and hundreds (more than 1,500) more to rehouse. But Cline isn’t daunted, even though she knows she won’t see all of the artifacts rehoused in her lifetime. She takes it one box at a time. And as an archeologist, she has an acute sense of curiosity and wonder.
“It’s like Christmas, you never know what you’re going to get! You just never know what you’re going to get.”
