SCRAP

In the Field with SCRAP

Transcript of video:

We’re here to investigate the Livermore Hollow Village, which was a mill village from the late 1800’s. We picked this spot, because there was a project for the State Parks that involved archaeology and we realized, once we got down here, that there was a lot of intact features to investigate. Over to my left was the village, and at one point that village was also associated with the Mill behind me; the Henry and Sons Mill. In NH, the Division of Historical Resources is responsible for not only preserving and conserving historic resources, but also for educating people and creating interest in our past. SCRAP began in 1978 as the idea of getting avocational archaeologists out into the field. Not only for educational purposes, but also to help preserve and conserve archaeological resources. SCRAP, the acronym, stands for state conservation rescue archaeology program. For the most part, we do a field school every summer. We also carry on some other excavations throughout the year on small projects and we do rescue archaeology for sites that are threatened by an immediate impact. It allows us to bring people out into the field, get them excited about archaeology, teach them what archaeology is about, you know, teach them the correct methodology. Not only for having avocational archaeologists that are well trained for jumping into a rescue archaeology operation, but also because they talk to their friends and family and get them interested in archaeology. I like going to field school, because I get to learn new and exciting things about different locations that I didn't know before. I would recommend SCRAP. It's more hands-on, it's not so much an academic setting, it's like a real-world experience where you work with the state archaeologist, opposed to a professor and you're in the unit. You're doing the digging and you're doing really everything that you would do on an actual site. There's other fields schools out there that you pay for and this one gives you the opportunity to work with everybody that is affiliated within your own local government, and you get to learn how things work. Contrary to what people think, the artifacts that we find really have no monetary value. Their value is in the information they provide about the people that lived here, and they also help to inform the manager of the park as to what they want the park to represent. SCRAP really does help with educating and raising people’s level of interest and general excitement and enthusiasm for the archaeology of New Hampshire. Following the correct methodology when you're recovering artifacts and archaeological deposits is very important because if you don't do it correctly, that data is lost forever. It helps promote archaeology throughout the state and get other people involved to want to learn more about where they're from and, perspective people, where you're moving to. This has been by far the best experience I have ever had in New Hampshire.