New AmeriCorps VISTA/OSM Masters of Science in Industrial Archaeology at Michigan Technological University!

The Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University is very pleased to announce our new AmeriCorps VISTA/OSM Masters of Science in Industrial Archaeology.  This new degree program allows students to dedicate time to the AmeriCorps VISTA program, where they can help make a difference in industrial communities living with the environmental and social legacies of mining heritage.  Michigan Tech seeks students with a passion for community-based and socially-engaged archaeological practice.  Details and links for the program website are below.

Best regards,

Tim Scarlett, Graduate Program Director

Industrial Heritage and Archaeology

Industrial Archaeology

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The OSM/VISTA Master of Science degree programs are offered through Michigan Tech’s partnership with the program operated jointly by the United States Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) and the AmeriCorps Volunteer in Service To America (VISTA) program. This unique program blends AmeriCorps service with a master’s degree program and emphasizes practical field experience and research.

Help to Revitalize Underserved Communities
OSM/VISTA places volunteers in hundreds of organizations dedicated to renewing the cultures, economies, and environments of historic mining communities. These diverse organizations encounter common challenges stemming from the cultural and environmental legacies of communities that developed their industrial wealth through mining operations. Active OSM/VISTA coalitions include the Western Hardrock Mining Watershed Team and the Appalachian Coal County Team.

VISTA volunteers partner with local groups to help communities build the capacity to manage economic redevelopment, cultivate environmental stewardship, and explore models of community revitalization. Since the Department of Social Sciences has expertise in working with industrial heritage and developing environmental and energy policies, we can effectively prepare students to become volunteers and aid them in transforming their experience into professional careers.

Career Pathways and Professional Preparation
Following one year of VISTA service, students return to campus to fulfill the requirements of their master’s degree. Students can apply to enroll in either the Industrial Archaeology MS or the Environmental and Energy Policy MS programs. 

OSM/VISTA students study alongside our other Industrial Archaeology MS students, pursuing a professional degree with diverse career pathways:

• Work with historic sites and museums

• Heritage and cultural resources management

• Field archaeology

• Public history

• Historic preservation and planning

• Education

• Community and government service

Additionally, some graduates will elect to continue their studies in a PhD program.

Our graduates go on to become competent professionals and engaged doctoral students because the curriculum creates the opportunity to develop practical, hands-on tool kits within a solid theoretical grounding, in addition to the powerful OSM/VISTA experience. Thesis projects are often developed in conjunction with OSM/VISTA affiliates, and therefore incorporate real-world situations.

More information:
http://www.mtu.edu/social-sciences/graduate/osm-vista/

http://www.hardrockteam.org

http://www.coalcountryteam.org

Iron, Oxygen and Salt

Iron and the metals derived from iron decay through several processes, but the main types of corrosion of interest to us are caused by reactions with Oxygen and Chloride.

Oxidation is the most important form of iron corrosion for our study. This corrosion results from the formal combination of oxygen with iron. Oxidation is an electrochemical process involving the formal removal of electrons from iron when it combines with oxygen. Iron has a negatively potential electromotive force (EMF), providing it a greater tendency to lose electrons and form positive ions. In contrast, copper is a more 'noble' metal with a higher EMF. The physical and chemical integrity of cupreous metals or artifacts will thus be preserved for a longer period of time compared to ferrous artifacts.

Electron flow is essential for oxidation. The process of oxidation occurs within a "galvanic cell," also known as an electrochemical half cell. Galvanic cells are created when two different metals or different areas of the same metal allow electrons to flow between them, from the positive anodic area to the negative cathodic area. Electrons flow from the anode to the cathode, breaking down the iron corrosion compounds at the anode. Oxygen bonds with the positive iron ions at the anode. This may occur numerous times to produce various types of oxidation and millions of individual galvanic cells are present on a single corroding artifact. Some people refer to the outcome of all these tiny cells as pitting corrosion.

Another major cause of metals corrosion are salts. In common use, salt refers to a collection of chemicals that include Sodium and Chloride atoms.  Conservators are concerned with how these ions electrochemically interact with metals, particularly chlorides.  When chloride atoms are ionised they become very reactive, and aggressively seek to interact with other molecules and ions. Concentrations of chlorides are a common salt water, for example, in maritime environments. Chlorides often saturate archaeological artifacts submersed in marine environments. Chlorides react with oxygen in a similar corrosive reaction to that described above.

The presence of chlorides exacerbates problems for conservators.  Chlorides readily go into solution, particularly in water.  When dissolved into a fluid solution, chloride ions facilitate all the corrosion processes, including what engineers would call galvanic and crevice corrosion.  In a general sense, the chemical reactions are all built around the same electrochemical reactions, but these reactions are encouraged or retarded by different structures, environments, and materials (or "material-environment systems" in engineering speak).

The artifacts recovered by Michigan Tech research teams have usually come from terrestrial environments drained by rain and freshwater runoff, thus chlorides are generally not a significant concern. At the West Point Foundry, for example, even though the estuarine environment of that section of the Hudson River could be brackish due to that river's famous tidal flow, most of the artifacts recovered during excavation came from parts of the site above the immediate area of foundry marsh and cove.  Our research teams were lucky, as are the landowners The Scenic Hudson Land Trust.  The absence of chlorides meant that ferrous iron artifacts recovered from this historic industrial site were inherently more stable than those impregnated with chlorides in solution. This gives field and lab archaeologists and conservators more time to deal with potential corrosion and decay.

Michael Deegan was the first collaborator on the West Point Foundry project to undertake a study of corrosion at the site.  He and I co-authored an article summarising our findings after dedicating time in my Archaeological Sciences course, examining corrosion and conservation at the West Point Foundry site with one of our collaborators.

I will summarise the molecular forms created through the corrosion processes in another post.  What I hope readers understand from the posts so far is that the decay of metals, particularly iron, is a "natural" electrochemical reaction that occurs unless something prevents it from happening.  Factors that enhance or retard the flow of electrons drive both the extent and rate of decay--the presence of liquid water and the presence of chloride irons (salts) are both critically important in the process.

Moreover, these factors do not need to be visible to the naked eye! Microscopic pores, fissures, and stress cracks all absorb molecules from the environment (even when that environment is arid).  Corrosion is almost always occurring, even when the object appears to be dry and clean in your storage facility.  Corrosion occurs slowly even while the object sits on the shelf in front of you in a museum!

For those undertaking more research on this topic, we have found these sources useful:
Donny L. Hamilton (1997) provided discussions of metals corrosion which I have found very useful. Other detailed treatments can be found in N. A. North (1987), Bradley Rodgers (1992, 2004), and Janet Cronyn (1990).


Cronyn, Janet M.
1990 The Elements of Archaeological Conservation. Routledge, London.

Hamilton, Donny L.
1997     Basic Methods of Conserving Underwater Archaeological Material Culture. Legacy Resource Management Program, United States Department of Defence, Washington, D.C. Retrieved from https://www.denix.osd.mil/denix/Public/ES-Programs/Conservation/Underwater/archaeology.html on September 12, 2007.

North, N. A.
1987 Conservation of Metals. In Conservation of Marine Archaeological Objects, edited by C. Pearson, pp. 207-252. Butterworths, London.

Rodgers, Bradley A.
1992 The East Carolina University Conservator's Cookbook: A Methodological Approach to the Conservation of Water Soaked Artifacts. Program in Maritime History and Underwater Research, Department of History, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina.

Rodgers, Bradley A.
2004 The Archaeologist’s Manual for Conservation: A Guide to non-Toxic, Minimal Intervention Artifact Stabilisation. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.

and our article:
Deegan, Michael and Timothy James Scarlett.
2008 The Conservation of Ferrous Metals from the West Point Foundry Site. Bulletin of the New York State Archaeological Association 124: 56-68.

Project Team: Eric Pomber

My name is Eric Pomber and I am a senior in the SocialSciences Program at Michigan Technological University.  I am originally from Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in a family in which most of my relatives worked in the auto industry. Growing up in an industrial town and seeing it's decline fed my interest in Industrial Archaeology.  I took part in the Cliff Mine Archaeological Project's 2011 Field School and worked as a Cultural Resources Intern for Isle Royale National Park in 2012. 

My first exposure to the problems of iron conservation came while working on old wooden boats.  In the past many shipyards used galvanized iron fasteners as an inexpensive alternative to bronze and this creates serious problems for people that maintain or restore those boats today (like me). The fasteners oxidize, leading to damage in the surrounding wood.  I was able to learn about traditional iron conservation techniques such as electrolysis during a course on Archaeological Sciences taught by Dr. Scarlett. I completed a project conserving iron artifacts from the Cliff Mine as a part of the course work.  That project was a great learning experience drew me into this project.  I look forward to helping develop this new technique to provide conservators a new option for iron conservation.  

Cliff Mine Archaeological Survey Website and Blog

Sean Gohman published the official website for the Cliff Mine Archaeological Survey. The first posts, about the field school, the site, and it's history, are signs of lots of good writing that will come during the summer!

Please check it out here:
http://cliffmine.wordpress.com

Upcoming Lectures and Presentations, March 23, 2010.

A series of excellent events coming up of interest to the industrial heritage and industrial patrimony.

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Social Science Brown Bag Lecture Series: Louise Dyble

"Landmark of Death: Responsibility, Safety, and the Question of a Suicide Barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge."

http://www.payingthetoll.net/

Friday, March 26th, 12 Noon - 1 PM. Room AOB 201.

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T. Allan Comp visit and lectures, March 28-29, 2010

Biography:

Dr T. Allan Comp is an historian based in Washington, DC. Jo Hanson, the pioneering public artist in San Francisco, once described Allan as "a relaxed blend of John Muir, John Dewey and John the Baptist." He holds a Ph.D in history, worked for several years in cultural resources with the National Park Service, left that to work as a developer of historic properties and consultant to historic preservation projects, and then to work for a regional Heritage Area in western Pennsylvania where he invented AMD&ART. Always a volunteer for AMD&ART, his work attracted the attention of other watershed and community improvement projects in the Appalachian coal country and in the Western hard rock mining country as well. Winner of multiple awards in partnerships and planning, Allan now leads the OSM/VISTA Team and Brownfields Initiatives at the Office of Surface Mining in the U.S. Department of the Interior.
http://tacomp.info/

Coffee with Social Science grad students from Industrial Heritage and Archaeology and Environmental Policy.

Monday, March 29, 8:30-9:30, Annex Seminar Room 

The Use of Sustainability through Combining Arts and Sciences in Professional Practice and Environmental Reclamation

Monday March 29, 2010 3pm DOW 642

The term "sustainable" can be, and is, thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean?  How are we as practicing professionals working in the environment to appropriately use the term?  What are the realistic dimensions of "sustainable'?  What part does public input, public understanding, public support play in sustainability?

I'd like to review a few projects that attempted a broader approach to sustainability and then turn to some of the lessons learned in those efforts, both for professional practice and the
language we use to describe that practice and for larger community-based perceptions of sustainability (or reality) as well.

One such example is the AMD & Art project (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/460/)

Comp’s idea was to reclaim toxic former coal mines using not only science but elements of design, sculpture, and history, which he hoped would spur community involvement and create vital public spaces…Undeterred, Comp put together a core team of designers that included hydrologist Bob Deason, sculptor Stacy Levy, and landscape designer Julie Bargmann. And crucial members of his elaborate cast were the townspeople themselves. “If I have an art form, it’s probably choreography,” Comp explained, “and I don’t even get to pick the dancers. I’ve got elephants and gazelles and they all have to work together.”… For years, Allan Comp has been describing the Vintondale project as “art that works.” The AMD&ART Park “works” in the sense that it filters acid mine drainage from millions of gallons of water. But it works in a much more subtle way as well—in the way the people of Vintondale experience and respond to it as art…ALLAN COMP HAS DESCRIBED the term “AMD&ART” as a shorthand for “science and the arts.” Following the ecological principle of interdependence, he possesses an almost mystical belief that disciplinary boundaries need to be broken down and worked across. Turf wars, especially at universities where budgets are strained, have too often kept the sciences and the humanities on opposite sides of campus, increasingly specialized, and so estranged that they, quite literally, cannot understand the language the other is speaking.”

“Twelve years after he hatched the idea to resurrect the town dump of Vintondale, Comp feels more certain than ever that the “arts and the humanities are absolutely necessary to environmental recovery.” Science can change the water chemistry, but for Comp, it is art and history, combined with the science, that will ultimately change people’s minds—will change the way we think about an industrial economy that is destroying the very ecosystems that sustain us, and all life. “It’s not the water that’s the problem, it’s us,” Comp said. “And if we fix us, we’ll start fixing the water.””

Evening Public Engagement:  Community-driven design in Environmental Reclamation

Monday March 29, 2010 6:30pm MUB Alumni Lounge B
The public lecture will definitely focus primarily on AMD&ART.  Dr. Comp will explore the co-dependence of the arts and sciences in environmental reclamation by introducing the community as the pivotal factor in adding sustainability to the process.  The public lecture will also focus on a few other spin-off projects to establish the viability of the approach and then try to draw a few lessons learned.  It will also include a short bit on a strong determined OSM/VISTA team of volunteers in Appalachia and the Western Hardrock.  This will be followed by an open question and answer session in the form of a dialogue.

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Social Science Brown Bag Lecture Series: Sean Gohman

"John M. Longyear's land holdings in the Gogebic Iron Range through the lens of Geographic Information Systems"

Friday, April 2nd, Noon-1 PM, room AOB 201.

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Moulshri Joshi, visit and lectures, April 18-24.

During the week of April 18-24, the Social Sciences department and the Visiting Women and Minority Lecturer/Scholar Series will be hosting Moulshri Joshi, a New Delhi architect and industrial heritage practitioner who is best known for her firm's prize-winning design of the Indian memorial to the victims of the Bhopal industrial disaster.  

Prof. Joshi will be available to participate in undergraduate classes and graduate seminars in environmental policy and industrial heritage management, and will meet with other interested groups across campus, to discuss current practices related to environmentally-sensitive planning as well as international industrial heritage policy – both celebratory and critical.   The central event of her residency will be a campus-wide lecture (probably Tues evening April 20) on the Bhopal Disaster and current efforts in India to memorialize its victims.  Prof. Joshi, though early in her career, has been an invited consultant in Japan and Europe to discuss these matters.

The websites listed below can give you more information about Prof. Joshi's architectural firm, 'Space Matters,' as well as descriptions of the Bhopal memorial and the many public controversies arising from it.   [This note by email from Susan Martin]

http://www.spacematters.in/
http://bhopalmemorial.blogspot.com/
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091204/jsp/nation/story_11819749.jsp
http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/fline/fl2626/stories/20100101262603800.htm

New blog- Industrial Heritage in Brazil!

Mariana Marcon has started a new blog about the Theory and Practice of Industrial Heritage (Teoria E Prática do Patrimônio Industrial) in São Paulo, Brazil. Her site is new and I am excited by the promise of future writing because of the beautiful photographs and the links that she has included.  The links connect the reader to important policy documents and intellectual statements about the preservation and management of industrial patrimony.  Her blog will also be interesting because Ms. Marcon also writes another new blog about urban planning, making a provocative combination.
http://arqueologia-industrial.blogspot.com/


I wish I could read Portuguese, but since there are so many cognate words with Spanish, I am able to muddle through!  Thanks for the new blog, Ms. Marcon.  I am looking forward to your writing and pictures!


The Comitê Brazileiro de Preservação do Patrimônio Industrial (TICCIH Brasil) is a vibrant group.  Their website is here:
http://www.patrimonioindustrial.org.br/

Henshaw's thoughts

Marc Henshaw wrote some interesting thoughts inspired by a recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  He was trying to raise awareness about the impending demolition of Andrew Carnegie's Pittsburgh Locomotive Works, but he also made some interesting observations about the challenges which heritage preservation poses for industrial (and post-industrial) communities.

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette article:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10040/1034454-437.stm

Archaeology Dude's discussion:
http://archaeologydude.blogspot.com/2010/02/industrial-archaeology-race-against.html

Industrial Archeology Image Archive

Michigan Technological University's Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program maintains the Industrial Archaeology Image Archive.

This archive's heart is the Robert M. Vogel slide collection.  Robert Vogel was the curator of Civil Engineering in the Division of Mechanical and Civil Engineering at the Smithsonian Institution.  As a pioneering industrial archaeologist, he defined important benchmarks for field work in Industrial Archaeology and helped to establish the Society for Industrial Archaeology and The Historic American Engineering Record.  His writings are part of the disciplinary cannon.

His slide collection includes thousands of images of different industry types from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and England.  The archive is growing all the time, interested people can already search it by industry type or keyword.  Check it out!

Industrial Archaeology on YouTube!

In case you've never tried, go to YouTube.com and search for Industrial Archaeology.  People have posted lots of videos about industrial history, work, and life.  Some great search terms are "industrial heritage," "industrial archaeology," and "factory tour."


Here are a couple of examples:

George Carter, P.E., provided this tour of the W. A. Young Machine Shop on Water Street in Rices Landing, PA, on the Monongahela River.

 Bob Pfeil of Watervliet Arsenal Museum guides a small group though the antique, belt-driven machinery in the museum. Machines demonstrated include a drill press, stamping machine, shaper, horizontal mill, lathe, planer, and grinder.




 


Demonstration of Jolly and Jig machines in pottery making - Louis Mulcahy Pottery, Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland.