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Thursday, July 3, 2008 Bowie children get hands-on with archaeology by Andrea Noble | Staff Writer
Future archeologists were hard at work unearthing artifacts at Belair Mansion in Bowie Monday morning. Approximately 20 children participated in the first ever ‘‘Can you Dig It?” program where they were able to participate in an archaeological excavation.
‘‘We just want to give them an appreciation of archaeology,” said Bowie’s Museums Curator Jason Illari of the city’s free program. ‘‘It is a science and people don’t just dig holes.”
Organizers planted artifacts ranging from shards of ceramic pottery to rocks used by Native Americans to smash nuts in four previously excavated sites and reburied them for the children to find. Children used small hand troughs to dig up the dirt and sifters to find the buried items.
Pamela Williams, Bowie’s assistant museums director, said the University of Maryland, College Park archaeology program excavated the five-foot by five-foot units about eight years ago but found few clues about the mansion, which was built around 1745. She said the land was probably plowed at some point in its history, sifting out any culturally significant items save for pieces of skeet likely leftover from owner William Woodward’s skeet shooting in the 1920s.
Bowie resident Diana Martone was excited to bring her two grandchildren to the program.
‘‘They are always into digging,” Martone said. ‘‘They just dug an over three-foot deep hole in my backyard.”
She hopped the supervised excavation would give both Cameron Stuart, 6, and Alexis Brock, 9, insight into a profession they are already well adept at.
Cameron said at home he likes to dig for treasure, but at Belair he was content to unearth broken glass from a bottle.
Belair Mansion’s chief archeologist for the project, Kurt Lewis, said he buried culturally significant pieces from several different time periods in the four sites. One was left open with bottles and ceramics exposed to give the children a visual example of the items they could expect to find. Others had up to 200 artifacts from either Native Americans or colonial black slaves. Lewis said he wanted to emphasize the area was inhabited before European settlers arrived.
Looking well beyond the 16th century, 9-year-old Nia Riggins of Bowie said she was hoping for dinosaur bones.
‘‘I love dinosaurs, and I also like watching Indiana Jones,” she said, explaining the origin of her fascination with digging.
Lewis said the program seemed to be such a hit he would like to host an entire archaeological summer camp next year.
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