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Let the relics speak
If you look carefully, the past speaks at David Clark's mobile archaeology lab.
The ceramic fragment, white with a transfer drawing of a nursing lamb, tells Clark it is from a piece of the "good" china, possibly a creamer.
The red clay fragment, glazed only on one side ?it surely came from an everyday storage container. This kind of glazing was for keeping food fresh, not for dressing up the pot.
The rows of tiny bumps on a thin piece of carved bone speak to its use ?a hog bristle toothbrush. Abraham Lincoln had a similar one.
David Clark's mobile archaeology lab is one of the best ways around to get your hands ?and heads ?around local history.
Dozens of today's Waterford residents took up Clark's offer July 26 to share their finds -- pottery shards and glass bottles and pounded metal hinges and anything else they've been collecting -- with the founder of the Loudoun Archaeological Foundation and with their neighbors.
"You don't always have to go out and dig things up," said Clark, who brings his archaeology lab -- and his passion for finding, identifying and preserving those pieces of the past -- to the people.
"My traveling lab is designed to use the artifacts that people find in their backyards by accident. This is all part of our archaeology program ?what have you found over the years?"
Neil Hughes brought three boxes of artifacts he has collected over the years and spent much of the morning washing and polishing his finds. The glass pieces and pottery fragments were scattered all around his property, he said, not found all in one abandoned fireplace pit or trash pile.
Five families brought perfectly preserved leather Victorian-era footwear found stashed in the walls of their houses and attics.
Clark, a professor of archaeology at Catholic University and at the Northern Virginia Community College, launched the Loudoun Archaeological Foundation in 2007 to coincide with Loudoun's 250th birthday. It also coincides with the need to educate Loudoun's thousands of new residents how people lived here before the pre-Civil War and pre-Revolutionary era ?and pre-European settlers -- farms and stores gave way to the Ashburns and Lansdownes and South Ridings of today.
Urban and suburban development devours those traces of the past. The mobile archeology lab gives the past a voice.
Alex Charlton, 13, was playing in the Tanyard Creek behind Waterford's Main Street when he found a rusted lock that may date from before the Civil War. He also displayed a musket ball he fished from the creek. Clark advised him to check Internet listings for matching locks to try to date it.
"This is what the Loudoun Archaeological Foundation does," Clark said. "We try to encourage every town in Loudoun to host the mobile lab, to raise awareness of their archaeological history."
Residents of Taylorstown and Hamilton talked to him about bringing the lab to their towns, Clark said. The lab will be set up in Banshee Reeks, south of Leesburg, Aug. 11 to invite the public to explore the foundations of a pre-Civil War tenant house. And there may be some long-buried relics from a prehistoric American Indian settlement near Goose Creek at the preserve.
Call Clark at 703-431-1737, to arrange a visit from the mobile lab. Go to www.loudounarchaeologicalfoundation.org to learn more.
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