How to beat the heat: have a weeding party!

A weeding party to "beat the heat"? Doesn't that seem counter productive? No, as it turns out, not when it is 97 degrees outside, your offices are not air-conditioned, and the weeding can be done in the shade. This week Seattle has been having nearly record-breaking heat, but that didn't stop about a dozen Burke staff and board members from getting down and dirty in the Erna Gunther Ethnobotanical Garden for a weeding party. We made quite a lot of progress and actually had some fun in the process. The garden looks so much better now!

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

Where can kids dig in Washington?

On four Saturdays this summer the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site is hosting a series of "Kids Digs." These 2-hour mock digs for children ages 8-12 give kids the hands-on experience they need to really understand what it means to be an archaeologist. Digs for kids are a rarity in the Pacific Northwest and the Burke Museum Archaeology Department has hosted a number of those few.

Our annual Archaeology Day often supports a mock dig and the Courtland Place Street Dig in Seattle was a class favorite. The Burke even ran a public dig on Vashon Island that resulted in a research publication. But the question remains, why are these digs so rare?

There are numerous reasons why an archaeological dig might be closed to the public. First and foremost are concerns about maintaining the scientific integrity of the site. Archaeologists go through years of education and hands-on training before they are let loose on an archaeological site and thus even the most well-intentioned amateurs can make mistakes at a dig that are all but impossible to correct.

Other considerations including safety, land ownership, tribal sensitivity, staffing, looting prevention, and excess costs are all reasons that most archaeological sites remain closed to the public. But for those of you interested in an archaeological adventure there are some options.

The USDA Forest Service Passport in Time program and the Earthwatch Institute both provide opportunities to get hands-on field training in archaeology. The National Park Service sometimes also offers volunteer opportunities in the field and maintains a comprehensive list of other opportunities. These intensive experiences are generally only available to adults or the teen crowd, but it is worth checking the websites of your nearest National Park or Forest to see what kid's events might be available.

In the meantime, be sure to check out the Fort Vancouver “Kids Digs.” These events are being held at the Fort on July 25, August 22, and September 26 and at the McLoughlin House in Oregon City on August 8. Kids Digs begin at 11am and run for 2 hours. Visit the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site website to learn more.

Posted by: Stephanie Jolivette, Archaeology Public Outreach

Photo (top): A Burke Museum archaeologist teaches kids about proper digging techniques at the Courtland Place Street Dig in 2004.

Video of Preston Singletary creating glass sculpture for Burke collection

Back in November, glass artist Preston Singletary created a very beautiful killer whale sculpture for the Burke Museum's permanent collection. One of our curator's recorded some video footage at the Museum of Glass, where Preston worked on the piece. Take a look to get a sense of his process, then come see the final piece on view now in the Pacific Voices gallery.



Read more about the story behind the sculpture here.

It's a circus! A Burke Circus!

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Step right up to your local Seattle Public Library branch to catch the Greatest Natural History Show on Earth at the Burke Circus!"

Or at least that’s what I was thinking as I piled into a van with three Burke Museum educators and a whole lot of brightly painted stage props, rocks, fossils, bird feathers, and clown costumes. I was tagging along to watch an episode of the Burke’s new summer partnership program with Seattle Public Library called Burke Circus.

The theme of this year’s popular Summer Reading Program at the Seattle Public Library is “nature” so the Burke Museum was asked to put together a presentation that used real museum objects and specimens to teach kids about the natural world in a fun, informal way. A few brainstorming meetings and 250 red clown noses later, the Burke Circus was born!

Yesterday’s trip was to the Greenwood Library branch, and I wasn’t the only one who came to see the show…about 90 kids under the age of ten poured into the special event room at the at 4 pm to take part in the adventure that is Burke Circus.

Now I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience for anyone planning on taking the young person in their life to an upcoming Burke Circus program, but let me just offer a few teasers:

Burke educators don silly costumes and “clown around” for half an hour. Keely and Gloriann were great comediennes!

Young members of the audience help match animal tracks to storybook characters (think Mother Goose or The Big Bad Wolf).

Everyone leaves wearing a red clown nose and a smile!

Click here to find out if the Burke Circus is coming to a library near you!

New podcast features stories in stone

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

A new podcast was added to the Burke's Interactive Web site this morning. It features David Williams, a geologist and an educator at the Burke, who recently published the book Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology and who will be presenting about that book at the museum on July 29.

I really enjoyed listening to David talk about how building stone, which can be found in nearly all urban environments (certainly Seattle!), can be indicative of so much: regional geologic history, fashion trends, the relative affluence of a city, etc. In recording this podcast with David, I learned that there are buildings in downtown Seattle made out of stone that is literally more than 1 billion years old. That's pretty amazing!

Listen to David's stories and learn more for yourself about Seattle's urban geology here.

Are you a fossil fanatic?

We just announced the final major exhibit to open in 2009: Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway! If you love fossils, be sure not to miss this one, opening on December 19.
Fossils have long been a subject of fascination and are used by paleontologists to help answer questions about early life on Earth. But how much can the fossil record tell us about evolution, extinction, and geologic time?

We are partnering with celebrated artist Ray Troll and Seattle-born paleontologist Kirk Johnson to present this new exhibit exploring the abundance of fossils in our midst and how and why fossils shed light on Earth's past. Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway will feature a dozen large-scale paintings of Troll's whimsical artwork, all of which were created for a book of the same title, published by Troll and Johnson in 2007. The book records the "epoch tale" of the duo's 5,000-mile road trip through the American West as they sought to explore the fossil record. The museum exhibit combines visuals and stories from the book with real fossil specimens from the Burke's own paleontology collection. Also on view will be a video of a more recent "fossil roadtrip" with Troll and Johnson at the wheel.

More to come as the exhibit develops, but mark your calendars for some fossil fun this winter!

Q: How does one go about moving 650 pieces of ceramic pottery from the Burke Museum to a new storage facility?

A: Very, very carefully!

As the Ethnology Department staff prepare to move the pottery collection to a new storage facility, one student looks back on the project with fond memories.

Posted by: Sarah Bishop, Ethnology

The packing project took our staff 4 months to complete, over 40 HUGE bags of biodegradable packing peanuts and resulted in a nearly 10-foot-high "box mountain" in the Ethnology storage area.

So, out of all the artifacts we have here in Ethnology, why move the pottery collection to this new storage space? The ceramic and pottery collections are not prone to insect damage and are relatively stable to small environmental changes (temperature and relative humidity). But it is also easier to care for similar types of objects when they are all stored in the same area, so a decision was made to put all of the pottery together. This will make it easier for researchers, students, artists and scholars to access and study the collections, and make comparative analysis between pottery styles.

Improper handling is the number one cause of damage to ceramics and pottery, so proper packaging for transport is extremely important. We tightly packed each ceramic object in biodegradable packing peanuts and sheets of Ethafoam (polyethylene foam). Each pot was wrapped in tissue paper to keep all of its pieces together in case of physical damage during transport. Extremely fragile ceramic objects needed to be stabilized before moving to prevent further damage. After each pot was packed, we wrote down the box number on inventory sheets so we could track which pots are in each of the boxes. This inventory is very important to ensure no artifacts are lost during the big move.

More...
After sealing each box with packing tape, we stacked them in the Ethnology Collection to await transport to the storage facility. After several games of Tetris at the video arcade the previous weekend, I was inspired to create "box mountain." The tower is secured (and protected from damage from earthquakes) with copious amounts of packing tape and is raised above the floor by two-by-fours to protect the ceramics in case of flooding. This stack of boxes saves invaluable collections space for us in the Ethnology Division. Now that the pottery collection is all packed up, it is currently awaiting transport to its new home!

Meanwhile, the collections manager and curator had to secure some necessary funding to purchase storage equipment for the pottery collections to be housed in. It is important to have strong equipment for the heavy pots to sit on, and large storage cabinets with closed doors to reduce dust. And of course, having been through minor earthquakes in the Seattle area, we need to make individual storage mounts for each piece of pottery so it doesn't roll or shake around too much.


Photos: Burke Museum collections staff and student assistants take great care in moving the museum's pottery collection to another storage facility. Sarah Bishop (bottom right) thinks creatively about how to store all of the boxed pottery pieces while they await transport.