Was It Worth Coming To Andover For Dig This!?

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Was It Worth Coming To Andover For Dig This!?

I knew that Phillips Academy always had a good reputation, but I had actually never been to one of their courses, so I wanted to experience it first hand, Here was the essential question, Was Phillips Academy’s reputation all hype? At first, I wasn’t so sure, but over the course of the next five weeks I would soon find out if the Phillips Academy Hype was worth what it was said to be, or not.

It is worth it to go to Phillips Academy. The teachers were great and the staff was great overall. I really enjoyed going there over the summer, and I learned many skills and many ideas.

Three of the skills that I learned were how to keep my notes clean-Cornell Notes- which really helped me, how to write a higher order question, and how to budget my time. Three ideas that I have learned is that being organized is key to getting good grades, always keep a vocabulary list, and what is the difference between a higher order question and a reporter question. All these things will help me next years and the years after, so think you Ms. Tully and Mr. Newhall. Also the kids there were fantastic.

Salem Town, Not Only Famous For Witches

Salem, Not Only Famous for the Witches!

Today, we went to Salem, Massachusetts. That happens to be where some of the witch trials took place. The witch trials were a horrible thing, and the girls that played the game were misguided, because the caused twenty people to die. That is horrible! I feel very bad for those twenty people, because they gave their lives for a kid’s game. They lost theirs lives for no reason. I also feel bad for Tituba, because she was not really a witch; she just said that so her master would stop beating her.

The first thing that we saw in Salem was a very sacred and famous, or I should say infamous, place. We went to the sight of the hanging tree. The funny thing was there was no memorial that showed that this was the place. Another weird thing was that the site was converted to a children’s playground, which is kind of scary. When I found out that the sight was of the hanging tree, I was shocked, because the first thought that came into my mind was the fact that little children were playing on the sight of a tree were people hung other people. In other words, the children were playing on the sight of where people died. It is very creepy!

The next thing we did was we went to the Visitor’s Center, where there was a gift shop, and where we watched a movie. The movie was primarily about Salem, but it featured other settlements of Essex County. One thing that made Salem blossom, was the fishing. All the fishermen thought that the fish were abundant, but they learned the hard way, that fish were not abundant, because soon the fish went away, and people were catching less and less. This is one of the main reasons that Salem blossomed early. Salem was where the first actual industry of the New World. It also had a big statue of a ship.

We then walked to the Narbonne house, which was built in 1675. One thing that was surprising was that no important event happened in it, or no important people lived there, although it is still very famous. It was consistently changed, because people kept on adding additions. They excavated the entire back yard, and they found A LOT of artifacts, they were amazing. They included china plates and cups, coins that could be dated back to before the 1800’s, I bet, wine bottles, intricate buttons, pipes, a huge coffee cup, bowls, pots, and much more.

We then went and had lunch by the waterfront. It was not awesome, it was horrible. The food was sort of bad, and the smell was even worse, but it was worth it because of the thing that we did after lunch. We got to go on a boat, a BIG boat. It was actually a ship, called the Friendship. It was actually really fun, and I got to become a JUNIOR RANGER SHIP MATE. I am so glad.

After that, we were almost done, but not quite. We went to a great gift shop that sold Asian products. I bought three items. Then we went to Mr. Newhall’s friend’s house. His name was Mr. Carr. He did a little excavation in his yard. He found a great many things, and that is because his house was built in 1788, which is really cool. He found a variety of things which included china plates, pipes, what we think to be a candle mold, ceramic, a lot of brick, a lot of rocks, and many, many more things. Then we got a special treat, Mrs. Carr gave us soda, lemonade, and homemade cookies. They were delicious. Today was majestic.

Rebecca Nurse Homestead Visit

Once again, we went to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Dig Site. All the original pits were gone, so we got to start new pits, only these were smaller because they were test pits. I got to dig in a test pit which turned out to be just as productive as my first pit. Another difference between today and the other trips was that today we got to take a tour of the old house, the barn, and the meeting house that was built for the use of the movie, Three Sovereigns For Sarah. That was really cool, because the barn was actually used as a meeting house, and in the meeting house, about the olden days. It was very informative. Some of things that we found when we were digging were red ware, white ware, brick, bone, and ceramic. Today was a a enriching field trip. I loved it. The meeting house was really cool, too. It was built to look old, but it is really quite new. They took out all the pews to fit all the chairs in the room. They also had platforms around they room that you had to use a ladder to get to. Usually, children and slaves would stand in those platforms. Also, the pews would be separated by gender, not family, although if a family was particularly wealthy, they could purchase their own pews. A cool thing about the house is that it is divided into two parts. One part is where the people take you on the tour, but the other part has people living in it. In the olden times, families would have to knit their own clothes, and it would take a long time. Traditionally, the children would have two sets of clothes, one for church and one set for working in the fields.

What I Learned on a Tour of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Dig

This time, we went to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Dig Site AGAIN! The different thing about this time is that we actually took a tour of the grounds, so we learned a lot of neat things for Mr. Hamilton and the director of the Robert S. Peabody Museum. Mainly, we went to the family’s personal graveyard, to the house, and to the place which was their trash dump. We also learned that the Nurses were not the only occupants of the house. In the 1800’s, the Nurses sold the house and the land to the Putnam’s. Then they lived in the house for a while. In the early 1900’s, the Putnam’s gav

e the house and land to a special organization about Rebecca Nurse. The society gave tours of the house for 25 cents.

On the land, they grew many plants that were necessary to live with. Some of them were asparagus, hopps, and alfalfa. Alfalfa is a plant that is mixed with hay. Hopps is used to flavor beer. They also grow a variety of other flowers that they don’t even tend to, becau

se they just grew wild and they look good.

Back in the old days, family’s would often have their own graveyards. We saw

a lot of gravestones that are really important. A lot of them were the Putnam relatives, but their were some Nurses, too. Rebecca Nurse was buried in an unmarked grave on the property, but they have not found her body, yet. The graveyard was very awesome.

Also, a movie was shot at the site called, Three Sovereigns For Sarah. They used a house that Abigail, a girl who was acting as though bewitched, lived. Rebecca and her father, the new minister could have been neighbors. The house is relatively new, but it was made to look old.

Overall, they trip this time was very informative and I really liked it, and we got to dig again. While digging, the director of the Robert S. Peabody Museum found a cat skull!

Digging into the past, and into a lot of rocks!

This was the second time that we went to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead dig site. Again, it was an awesome experience although it was not as fun as last week. The main reason for that was that this week, while digging, we encountered a level in the ground that was all stones and pebbles. It took most of the time there to get halfway through it. We did not even finish. It really made my hands sore, using the tool, because it was very hard to get the stones out. We also did not find very many artifacts this time, because of the stones. The stone layer really didn’t hold any artifacts because nothing was thrown out with the stones, so nothing but stone was there. I was not very happy, but I was still excited, because under the layer of stone is all the artifacts from the early 1800s and even deeper than that into the past. I can’t wait until next Saturday, to start digging again, but I could do without the big rocks. Another thing that the other group found was a major artifact, it was a gold ring! Also, a very nice man showed me somw cool stone tools that he found himself.

This was written by Siddarth Palaniappan

What I Saw at Harvard

What I Saw at Harvard

Today, July 16, 2008, I went to see the Peabody Museum of Archaeology at Harvard. I had a great time, but I learned many non archaeological answers when I while I was there. One of them was the Harvard is the oldest college in the United States. It was also the fist college the housed Native Americans. Harvard was founded in the year 1636. It started to accept Native Americans in the 1650’s. Harvard University was named after John Harvard, who when he died, donated his library to the school. The school was named after him in his honor. Many more things is that the first printing press in the US was used at Harvard and the printing press printed the first bible in Algonquian language. I learned all of these things in the duration of 5-10 minutes.

At the beginning of the trip, when we first got there, we didn’t take a tour. Instead we did a little activity. This activity involved pieces of wine bottles and pieces of tobacco pipes. We got to date the wine bottles and thee pipes. The latest pipe I got was from the 1800’s. The earliest pipe stem was from the early 1600’s. It was awesome to get to date the objects. I had a blast!

Then we took a tour of Harvard Yard, where some students excavated to see if they could find the Indian College. They did not find it, but it must have been fun to do it. The oldest building there was from 1720. Some Revolutionary War Soldiers even camped out there! The trip was very informative.

We then ate lunch. Then we did take a tour of the museum and it was awesome. The first room I visited was the Lewis and Clark room. There were a lot of interesting facts about there journey. They made some weird things, but they even made a necklace, out a bear’s claws. It was scary. They also made a quiver out of ravens, four to be exact. They used signs to mark there way, too.

Then we visited the Native American Room. It rocked! They had an exhibit where they talked about modern Indians. Indians have designed skateboards and shoes, and some are DJ’s and even rappers. Native Americans can have any jobs that they want. The older Native Americans made many things, and one of the things that they were exceptionally good at was making canoes. They made many canoes, but they also made totem poles. The totem poles that they made were all hand carved and that is pretty amazing.

Lastly, we visited the room associated with Latin America. It was awesome. One group of people from Latin America was the Copan people. They were around in the 8^th century and they had a very nice city. Another thing is that some of the projectile points are longer than I am used to. They also believed in deities, like the Maize Deity. They often made statues of these deities. They exhibits were great.

The last exhibit was the Glass Flowers, and that exhibit I can only describe in a picture:

What I Did At The Mashentucket Pequot Museum

What I Did At The Mashantucket Pequot Museum

At the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, I did a lot of things. I got to see a reconstruction of a Pequot village, I got to see a movie on the war between the Pequot’s and the British, I got to see an exhibit on races, and I got to see a religious “Pow Wow”. This took up most of my time there and I had a blast. It was so fun.

My Trip To The Rebecca Nurse Homestead Dig

My Trip to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Dig

It was a Saturday in the summer, July 12, 2008 to be exact. I was excited because today was the day the Phillips Academy Summer Session was taking our class to a dig site. The dig site was not that far away. It happened to be in Danvers, which used to be part of Salem. The site was named after a famous girl from a long time ago. Actually, she was accused of being a witch. She was found innocent by the trial, but was hung anyway. She was baptized February 21, 1621. She was the daughter of William Towne.