As I knew would happen, I've had relatively little time for art since the semester started. It has been a busy (and productive) fall so far in terms of academics and research. My creative ideas and materials have been piling up, though. I could go into high gear at any time, but the problem is I don't have any time.

I'm almost done with my entry for ArtFields (the deadline is November 9th), so I've been using what time I have to push "Beauty and Grace" toward the finish line. I just have some grinding/polishing/cleaning to do, and then I have to figure out a way to take some decent photos. That has to happen before I leave for SEAC. I also need to finish a luna moth that will grace the sign for my wife's shop (Luna Lola) that she'll open soon on Rosewood. More on that later. Follow the ZeroPointMechanic page on Facebook for updates.

I wanted to share a few photos of a nearly complete sculpture that I more-or-less finished last weekend: "My Father's Hammer." It is a sentimental piece, so it's not for sale. It came together quickly -- I thought of it as a sketch trying to capture the energy and motion of a crow coming in for a landing. It's a freeze frame about adaptability, which is one of the main gifts my father gave me. The head is made from the head of his old hammer, complete with the nails hammered in to shim it onto the shaft. Lots of other odds and ends are pieces of old tools that he let me pick out of his garage over the summer. I'm going to have to secure the piece to a larger metal base to make it stable. Other than that, though, it's done as is.

I happy to announce that my first owl sculpture (now named "The First Owl") received first place in the professional sculpture division at the 2017 South Carolina State Fair. The prize money will make a nice addition to my art war chest. I've got big plans.

​This is the last weekend of the fair. My wife and I have been virus-ridden zombies all week, but we managed to rally and get the kids out there this morning (we live just a short distance to the fairgrounds). I can report that the baby ducks are still being tricked into going down the water slide, the roosters are still cool, and AC/DC is still the soundtrack to the Matterhorn ride.

I can also report that, though a five minute conversation with a representative from the Libertarian Party, I have definitively demonstrated to myself that I am not a Libertarian. I do not believe a "de-centralized, community-based" to hurricane relief in Puerto Rico would be more effective than what the federal government is capable of doing. I also do not believe all state and local governments have done a super great job of protecting the fundamental rights of their citizens. Or educating them. Or providing them with basic services. 

Also: the kids each came home with an inflatable rainbow poop emoji. I have refused to participate in blowing them up. That's today's report from paradise.

I recently announced the return of the Broad River Archaeological Field School for the spring semester of 2018.  Student registration begins in November, and the logistical and strategic wheels are in motion.

This week I received radiocarbon dating results from two samples I submitted to Beta Analytic. Radiocarbon dates are not cheap (about $600 for an AMS analysis that returns an age estimate from a very small sample), and I am grateful to a private donor who supplied funds to date one of the samples from 38FA608.

Here are the date results on a generalized figure of the stratigraphy at 38FA608 as I currently understand it (based on profiles of Units 1, 2, 9, 11, and the original machine cut):​ 

The date for Zone 7 -- from a single piece of charcoal that Jim Legg picked out of the profile of Unit 9 -- came back right at the Middle/Late Archaic transition. It's a date that's consistent with Zone 7 being related to the Guilford point fragments that we've gotten from the site (only one of which has actually been found in situ).  Thus my original suspicion of a Middle Archaic age for Zone 7 is supported.

The date for the Zone 19 sample, however . . . was a bit of a surprise. It also came back as Middle Archaic in age, about 700-800 calendar years older than Zone 7.

I only wrote briefly about Unit 11, which I and several volunteers put in after field school to get our first good look at what is beneath the deposits exposed by the original machine cut.  There wasn't much material until we neared the boundary of a seasonal water table. Right above that, there were some large cobbles and a very light scattering of small, angular quartz fragments. As I wrote back in May, none of the cobbles appears to have been modified (at least based on a macro inspection), and none of the pieces of angular quartz is a slam dunk for a human-made stone tool. Other than human deposition, however, I can't think of a good explanation for how that material got there -- it is so unlike its sandy matrix in terms of size that it could not have been transported by the same mechanism.

I dated a single piece of charcoal plucked from the wall of Unit 11 (FS 1318) from a zone beneath the "cultural" material in an attempt to learn something about where those deposits might be in time. Given what seemed to be a fairly regular accumulation of the sand from the Middle Archaic though the Woodland period, I was expecting an Early Holocene rather than a Middle Holocene age -- I thought we might be looking at the edge of an Early Archaic deposit. 

​There are two main possibilities for the date: (1) it accurately dates the age of Zone 19; or (2) it doesn't.

It's possible that that piece of charcoal worked it's way down through the sand from a higher elevation, perhaps through bioturbation (movement by animals or roots). There's no obvious signs of intrusion from where the sample was taken, but that doesn't mean much in these old sands: we wouldn't necessarily expect that subtle signs of intrusion would be discernible in these kinds of sediments after 6000 years. 

So the date could be "bad" in the sense that it isn't giving us the age of the deposit. I think it's entirely possible, however, that it is accurate. While the idea of a slow and steady accumulation of sand over the course of the Archaic is appealing, there's no reason to assume that that's how it went down. It's possible that rates of deposition varied. The levee could have aggraded more rapidly during the Middle Holocene, perhaps as a function of both Middle Holocene climate and the lower elevation of the existing surface at that time (making it easier for the landform to be over-topped by flood waters). 

If Zone 19 really dates to around 4700 BC, the deposits in Zone 15 could be related to a deeply-buried Morrow Mountain occupation. 

Investigating the deep deposits at 38FA608 is a top priority for excavations in the spring. Stay tuned!

The almost two-year-old saga of Swordgate has brought us to a near complete understanding of the Hercules Sword’s origin and life story. The lineage of almost all examples in the inventory has been established and a functional predictive model has been produced. Using morphological features and a handful of known purchase dates, group types have been created and organized chronologically. The first version of the model was given limited release within the Swordgate community earlier this year for scrutiny and discussion. Version 2 now represents an enhanced effort with added sample corroboration, new identifiers, and upgraded annotations and graphics. Version 2 is the formal release to the world, or at least to those still playing along at home.
 
First some clarity on the name and term usage during Swordgate. Hercules Sword is the global term we use to describe any and all of the swords in the inventory. The salient sword of interest that started this debunking effort was the example seen on the Curse of Oak Island TV show in season 3 at the end of 2015. This example goes by its specific inventory name of the Nova Scotia Sword and has the ID tag of 1J(c), meaning #1 in the inventory and a member of the sub group J(c). Find locations and finder or owner names have been used as the general approach for most inventory naming. The other term commonly used during Swordgate to link identity with the TV show and the related pseudo history nonsense from Jovan Philyaw, is the Oak Island Fake Roman Sword. Finally, just to be clear, these pseudo artifacts are not swords by any objective definition. They are souvenir collectables in the general shape of a sword and are referred to as swords only in a representative sense. If you are new to Swordgate please consider reviewing the full Swordgate blog category or visit the unofficial official Swordgate Youtube channel for more details.     
 
We started the Swordgate odyssey with early comparative examples that hinted at some sort of relationship between swords. The now legendary J mark and supporting dots and ridges seen on early finds hinted at a grouping scenario. When the Curse of Oak Island TV show presented the definitive metallurgical results on the Nova Scotia Sword, identifying it as modern era copper and zinc alloy brass, it became a Swordgate blog and Facebook group challenge to identify the true origin story. Andy put a bounty on the table and the stakes were huge!

The swords kept coming. Contributors of sword examples gradually provided a range of acquisition tales, including original source provenience to markets in Rome and Pompeii. Weeks and months passed and the inventory became substantial enough that morphologic similarities were indexed into multiple groups. Three dimensional model scans added to the identification of features. Swordgaters on the blog and on Facebook worked together to create predictable lineage for all swords. The pseudo history promotion of the Nova Scotia sword being something other than modern was debunked and falsified to a clearer focus on where it came from and when it was made. 
 
By the start of 2017, the primary working hypothesis that all brass swords are relatively recent souvenir collectables from Italy was rock solid. Characterization of the full inventory ultimately resulted in the first 2’ x 2’ poster version of the Timeline Morphology Model in April 2017. Version one was presented and distributed on Facebook and a subsequent summary was included in a video posted to the Youtube channel. The model presented six group types with two sub types, a timeline from the mid 1970s to present, and eight primary, seventeen secondary, and six tertiary morphologic indicators spread over each group type and sub type.   
 
Over the summer of 2017 additional nuance and annotation has been incorporated. One additional secondary indicator and two additional tertiary indicators were added, and one indicator flip from secondary to primary has been done. One confirmed feature trend pattern is also added as a secondary indicator. Two more swords were added to the inventory and each fit nicely with established group types and lineage. The Timeline Morphology Model is now updated to version 2.0.  

​The following summary presents group type and sub type letter identifier and naming identifier, primary metallurgy, sample size (for the salient Italian brass years), known purchase source locations, and known/weighted interpretation of time period limits.
 
X          for Xiphos / iron(?)  / pre 1975(?)
F          for Fuller (partial) / brass / n=3 / Rome / 1975-1980
T          for Transitional / brass / n=2 / Rome / 1980-1983  
J(c)      for J Mark & Circle Mark / brass / n=3 / Rome / 1983-1987
J(r)      for J Mark on Reverse of blade / brass / n=1 / Rome / 1987-1990
J          for J Mark / brass / n=3 / Rome / 1990-1995
CS       for Clean Sword / brass / n=7 / Pompeii / 1995-2008
I           for Iron / iron / 2003 to present
CS2     for 2nd generation CS traits / brass / 2015 to present
F2        for 2nd generation F traits / brass / 2015 to present
 
The model’s primary, secondary, and tertiary indicators are presented on the poster with example pictures and annotations. Interpretation of the indicator features should be relatively straightforward and most have been discussed previously in the blog and on Facebook. Primary indicators are the single dominant feature consistent in the group type. The two sub types in group J have a consistent sub identifier. A mix of hilt and blade traits are used as primary indicators. Secondary indicators are also consistently seen in all examples in the group or sub type but clarity can vary. The secondary indicators are primarily related to hilt differences. Tertiary indicators are not necessarily seen in all examples in a group or sub type or more examples are felt to be needed for corroboration.  
 
The model poster also presents a selection of enlargements for added clarity. Annotation providing characterization of the main Italian brass period and the more current iron and polished brass pieces is also included. The Nova Scotia Sword is illustrated at full scale with annotation for added context, and the most current and unique sword from Italy is illustrated at full scale for interest and comparison. 
 
The timeline distinctly shows the early Italian brass sword years, 1975-1995, reflecting Rome as the known market for Types F,T,J(c), J(r), and J, and later years of 1995-2008 reflecting the Pompeii market for Type CS. More current iron swords and the most modern brass sword examples from Italy are noted as 2003 and 2015 respectively with regard to original retail date. The distinct largest sword identified, Type X, has been inserted as the possible earliest sword based on a combination of morphology clues.
 
The Italian tourist market brass swords representing the span from 1975 to 2008 are the critical comparative examples for the purpose of determining the origin of the Nova Scotia Sword. The Timeline Morphology Model identifies the Nova Scotia Sword in the span of ca.1983-ca.1987 and it is sourced to the souvenir trade in Rome.   

By comparison, the find story of the Nova Scotia Sword provided by Jovan Hutton Pulitzer and the Curse of Oak Island TV show is without a doubt false. The claim that it was pulled up by scallop fisherman from a Roman shipwreck near Oak Island in the 1940s is a fabricated story with no evidence. It should be clearly noted that the association of the sword to an alleged and fake Roman shipwreck was never detailed on the TV show but rather was only explicitly told by Pulitzer and used in his fake news releases. Pulitzer clearly did not use critical thinking and due diligence to determine facts. Facts matter. The producers and cast of the TV show did use due diligence to have the sword professionally tested. The metallurgy tests by St. Mary’s University confirmed the sword as modern era brass. The magnified truth of specific origin as a tourist souvenir from Rome in the mid 1980s is now quite clear.
 
Many thanks and congratulations are extended to all the Swordgaters that crowdsourced the finds, the data, and that provided discussion used to build the knowledge base for the model. We can all split the reward and reap the glory. There are still a few unanswered questions that linger and some fine tuning that can occur, but a well played battle has been won.
 
Stay tuned for the unofficial official Swordgate Poster v6.0 update that will present the full sword inventory (we’ve hit 25!) with summaries of the primary hypothesis, 3D analysis, hilt design, metallurgy, morphometrics, and bivalve mold casting.    
 
Keep it real. Keep it Swordgate.  

I'm happy to announce that I'll be teaching an archaeological field school again during the Spring semester. We'll be returning to site 38FA608 in Fairfield County, South Carolina, for a second season of fieldwork.  The course will be listed as ANTH 322 (722 for graduate students) and the basic details will remain the same: every Friday from 8:00-4:00, transportation provided.  You can learn all about last year's adventures through blog posts on the Broad River Archaeological Field School website and through a summary article in Legacy.

The Spring 2017 field season helped us learn a tremendous amount about the natural and cultural deposits at 38FA608. The discovery of a buried Mack (Late Archaic/Early Woodland, ca. 2000 BC) component was one of the big surprises. There is also evidence of a slightly earlier Savannah River component (perhaps represented by several intact pit features). There are tantalizing suggestions of a deeply-buried component that could date to the Early Archaic period.  The basic laboratory processing of the materials from 2017 has been completed, and I'm working on an analysis as time permits. I sent to radiocarbon samples off to Beta Analytic last week (one from the deeply buried zone that I'm betting is Middle Archaic in age, and one from the lowest zone exposed in our post-field school Unit 11 excavations last May).

The 2017 field season has set us up very nicely for work in 2018.  My two main goals are to: (1) excavate several of the pit features that almost certainly belong to the Mack and/or Savannah River components; and (2) make a more extensive exploration of the deep deposits.  The feature excavations will involve both re-opening and expanding the "upstairs" block as well as working along the profile wall to salvage the features that were exposed by the old machine cut.  Investigating the deep component will require some engineering to protect ongoing work from water, both from above and flowing into the air. I've got a plan for that and it involves sandbags.  We are, after all, not lacking in sand.  

I've got some strategic, monetary, and logistical issues to work out before January. I'll keep you posted as my plans develop and as analysis of the 2017 materials moves along.  In the meantime, here's a quick diagram illustrating what I have in mind.

Back in the late 2000's, I took the terrifying step of creating folders on my computer to start pursing my formal dissertation research. Around the same time, I realized that my system for organizing my paper files had become a sandbag. The physical compartments I was using to segregate "different" aspects of my work were hurting my ability to see and explore the overlapping areas of several inter-connected problems. I tore everything apart and put it back together again so the overall structure was different, the grains of information were different, and the "bins" were collapsed into a single well that I could draw from. In order to stop blindly analyzing the different parts of the elephant and start trying to understand the whole animal, you first have to understand  that you're looking at pieces of a much larger puzzle.

It was more of a strategy than an epiphany. 

Last week I got into the nitty-gritty of a SEAC paper I'm writing with David G. Anderson (University of Tennessee). We're using various large datasets to try to describe and interpret patterns of change in archaeological remains that could be related to changes in the size, structure, and distribution of human populations in the Eastern Woodland during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.  

As I started pulling together information (from PIDBA, DINAA, and my ongoing radiocarbon compilation) and thinking about how to organize it, I realized that keeping the databases separate was both a logistical hassle and an analytical problem. I invested in dumping all the information into a single relational database that we can use for this paper and that I'll continue to update in the future. I've been calling it "Megabase" in my head. So that's what it is until it gets a better name.

​Here is an illustration that I'll briefly discuss:

On the left is what I'm building now. I used GIS to generate a listing of "center" UTM coordinates (n=2097) for every county in the eastern US (everything east of the first tier of states west of the Mississippi River) and much of eastern Canada. I'm calling that the "County Core." That coordinate list lets me easily create a spatially-reference file for whatever other information I want from any of the other databases without needing to know the exact locations of archaeological sites.  Making a county-level map of all eastern radiocarbon dates in the database (9,533 and counting) in the eastern US is just a matter of a few button clicks in Access, Excel, and GIS. The same is true of the PIDBA data, the Kirk Project data, the household archaeology data, and the DINAA data. 

The Megabase of Today will be fine for the SEAC paper and for the near future. It will be able to do a lot. Ideally, however, the Megabase of the Future will have DINAA serving as both a "router" for data that is attached to a Smithsonian Trinomial and an analytical tool in its own right. One issue is that not all states are currently participating (and therefore not all Smithsonian Trinomials -- the "addresses" for sites -- are in the system).  Another issue is that the site forms (and therefore the site information that is collected and stored) differ by state. To reach its full potential, DINAA data will have to be supplemented by additional data about the materials recovered from sites, how sites were recorded, etc. Ensuring that we're making "apples to apples" comparisons will be a significant chore -- DINAA currently has information on somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million sites. You can't just sit on your couch and cross-check all that.

I know enough to be dangerous with a computer, but I'm not sufficiently sophisticated to know the nuts-and-bolts options for building the Megabase of the Future. In 2015 we did a sort of "proof" of concept to demonstrate that the EWHADP and DINAA could be linked together. I'm not sure if that is they way to go or not. Perhaps there's something that can be done with blockchain technology -- it sure sounds cool.

Anyway, I'm going to get the Megabase of Today functional in time to do the analysis for the SEAC paper we'll give in a month. If you're interested in talking about the Megabase of the Future, please let me know.

I'm writing this post as a placeholder for Fake Hercules Sword 18. While we've known of the existence of this sword for over a year now, all we have is a single image and a four sentence email. I responded to the original email at three different times asking for more information but alas . . . crickets.

Anyway, in the interest of sharing what we know (and satisfying the squeaky wheels over at the Swordgate Institute of Research, I give you the only image of Fake Hercules Sword 18:

The owner reported that he/she lives in Louisiana and got the sword when his/her father passed away. That's all we know.

This is just a quick post to update some recent goings on in my art world. I've been busy at work and home the past couple of weeks, so I've had little time to do much new except collect materials and make some minor progress on "Beauty and Grace" (my entry into this year's ArtFields competition, pending completion). But here's what else has been going on:

"Old Ben" at the Zoo Auction
​
The winning bid on "Old Ben" at ZooFari was $325. I have no idea who walked away with it (I've met or know every other person that owns one of my sculptures). I estimated the piece would go for around $300, so I got that part right. I wish I knew who bought it.

"Call It In" at Rosewood

I'm happy to announce that my entry into the Rosewood Art & Music Festival won first place in the three-dimensional category. I entered "Call It In," my first attempt at a Mississippi Kite. There was a lot of great artwork at the festival, and it was an honor to win a prize.

​I didn't know these birds before I moved to Columbia -- they migrate into the area in the summer from South America to breed and feast on cicadas, circling over our neighborhoods in June, July, and August. 

I put a price tag on "Call It In" but it didn't sell at the festival. If you're interested, it's now listed on my Etsy site.

It doesn't make sense to beat up on my own artwork when it's for sale, but there are a few things about this piece that bother me. The wings are too short, and I'm not satisfied with some aspects of the posture and body covering. I'll probably attempt another kite at some point for that reason. I've done three owls now and I still haven't made the owl I really want. I'm working on my fourth ceratopsian and my third crow. We'll see.

I'd like to thank my neighbors for their interest and support. Columbia is a good art town.

As always, I invite you to follow the Zero Point Mechanic page on Facebook to keep up with what's going on in my garage.

I often walk to campus, passing American Legion Post 6 at Pickens and Whaley streets. There's an old boxcar parked in the lot to the side of the building, visible from the street but behind a fence that you need to walk around to get to it. Since I moved to Columbia (it's been two years and change now), I never bothered to  walk back around the building to have a closer look. So I didn't learn until yesterday (from an article in The State) the story behind South Carolina's "Gratitude Train." 

The narrow gauge boxcar is a "Forty and Eight" (so named because it could carry forty people or eight horses) that was widely used in Europe during the early twentieth century. According the newspaper article, the boxcar at the American Legion

"was part of a 49-car “gratitude train” from France that sent one boxcar to each of the 48 states and the District of Columbia as thanks for the United States’ participation in World War II and America’s aid afterward."

The boxcar is scheduled to be moved to Bishopville, South Carolina. Alert readers of this blog may remember my brief visit to Bishopville and my students' drawings of me being attacked by the Lizard Man of Lee County, "evidence" of which is curated at the South Carolina Cotton Museum in Bishopville.

I took a few minutes to detour around the fence and have a look at the boxcar myself before it is moved. There's more to learn about this, but for now I'm just going to post some of the pictures I took.

Readers of this blog from the pre-Swordgate era may remember the Eastern Woodlands Household Archaeology Data Project (EWHADP) that I initiated in February of 2014. The goal of the EWHADP is to assemble and make available information about prehistoric residential structures in eastern North America. The project has it's own website where you can read all about it and access the data.

After an initial startup pulse, I had to put the project on hold when I started teaching at Grand Valley (Fall of 2014). Emily Gilhooly, one of my undergraduate students at Grand Valley, worked on the project during the winter of 2015 and began the long process of updating the database by checking and re-coding every single entry. As I prepared to make the move to the University of South Carolina in the spring of 2015, I started a GoFundMe campaign to raise some cash to pay a research assistant to work on the project. Thanks to the generosity of several donors, that campaign was successful. With the hiring of USC graduate student Laura Clifford, the project was up and running again in the fall of 2015. While Laura made a lot of headway tracking down references and moving the database forward, however, she soon found a better long-term employment situation. So I hit the pause button again on the EWHADP.

The project stayed paused as I moved from the SCIAA building into my new lab space, worked my way through my first two years of teaching at South Carolina, and initiated some excavation fieldwork at a site on the Broad River. After that field school, I hired one of my students (Sam McDorman) to do the bulk of the basic laboratory processing of the materials we recovered. With the artifacts from 38FA608 washed and cataloged, I can start analysis. And I can move Sam on to another project: the EWHADP.

Of the $3400 in donated EWHADP funds that I came with, there was about $2870 left at the beginning of the semester.  That money should be sufficient to get through at least 2.5 of the three goals I have:

1) assemble primary references for all information in the database;
2) check and re-code existing information in the database, supplying missing information and adding greater detail;
3) add new information to the database.

I don't expect to get through these goals quickly, but the wheels are now in motion again. The EWHADP is staffed, funded, and exists in a dedicated office space with room for files, books, piles of stuff, a scanner, and a computer. When the second goal is completed, you'll get an updated database that should be an order of magnitude better than the one that exists now. And then you'll start getting updates to the website as we begin adding in new information.

I'd like to again thank those that donated to this project and haven't questioned why it has periodically slowed down over the years: anyone who juggles knows that it's difficult to keep everything up in the air at all times. Your patience is appreciated. Thank you. And stay tuned.