Sunrise on the Cane River
This website chronicles the interwoven archaeological training and research projects
conducted during the summer of 2006 at the St. Anne (16NA529) and Whittington (16NA241)
plantation sites in Louisiana.*
In June the NCPTT hosted "Prospection
in Depth," a Summer Institute training program in GIS, GPS, and remote sensing
aimed at archaeology professionals and students around the country. Four instructors
and 10 participants used the St. Anne and Whittington sites as learning laboratories.
This group of 14 collected GPS and remote sensing data, analyzed them through a
GIS platform, and then worked in concert with a mature archaeological project to
ground-truth their hypotheses within an existing research framework.
The research venture--the Cane River African Diaspora Archaeological Project--has
been directed by David W. Morgan
(NCPTT) and
Kevin C. MacDonald (University
College London) since it began in 2001. They have used the St. Anne
and Whittington sites, along with other related plantations in the parish, to gain
a valuable perspective on the process of creolization that occurred on the French
colonial, Spanish colonial, and early American frontiers of the 1700s and 1800s.
This marks the third and most intensive season of excavations undertaken as part
of the project. Consequently, Summer Institute ground-truthing occurs within a well-documented
historical, archival, and archaeological set of contexts, making the training experience
all the more robust. In concert with the investigations initiated by the Summer
Institute participants, an international team of 11 researchers went on in the summer
of 2006 to excavate by hand 89 square meters as units and some 6 square meters as
75 shovel tests.
The preliminary field results are presented here, so that Summer Institute participants
and other interested people can learn from this unique fusion of technological training
and traditional research.
You are encouraged to join us in this endeavor by ground-truthing the remote sensing
data yourself:
- select a site to explore
- examine the remote sensing data
- compare anomalies with excavation unit and/or shovel test locations
- virtually excavate the unit or shovel test in question by studying the context (excavation)
forms, plan view drawings, profile drawings, and photographs
*Funding for Summer 2006 excavations was generously provided by the
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the
United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council (UKAHRC) . Any views,
findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed within this website do not necessarily
reflect those of the NEH or UKAHRC. This website is sponsored solely by the National
Center for Preservation Technology and Training.