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ANDOVER — WANTED: High school students with a passion for history, mystery, anthropology, and dirt. You’ll find all of them in Danvers, Mass., this summer, at the famous Rebecca Nurse Homestead, where a five-week course in archaeology takes you underground to unearth the colonial and prehistoric secrets that have lain below the surface for hundreds of years. The course, first offered last summer, is part of Phillips Academy’s Summer Session.
Students may apply as either day or boarding students, and applications for those seeking financial aid are due by March 1. The summer course runs from July 1 through August 6, 2008, and substantial financial aid is available, according to Malinda Blustain, director of the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology on the Andover campus. Blustain, who oversees the project, stressed the availability of financial aid grants because she is eager to extend this unusual and exciting opportunity to every interested student. The regular cost of the five-week course—which involves excavating the site, processing and cataloguing artifacts, and creating an artifact database—is $4,400 for day students and $6,400 for students who wish to board on the Andover campus.
Dr. Nathan Hamilton, one of New England’s pre-eminent archaeologists, will return to teach the course for a second summer. Last summer Dr. Hamilton, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Southern Maine, and his crew of summer session students and graduate assistants unearthed hundreds of artifacts, including fine clay pipes, cufflinks, European pottery, and optical glass. All the finds were carefully cleaned, studied, labeled, and stored as part of on-going research at the site. Blustain was ecstatic. “This marks the Peabody Museum’s involvement in archaeological research for the first time in more than 20 years,” she said. And they’ve only just begun.
“Last summer we were able to give students a spectacular experience,” Blustain said, “and we have a strong sense we’ve only scratched the surface, so to speak.” She said last summer’s team may have located a prehistoric encampment site that will be one focus of this summer’s dig.
The central focus, of course, is on the artifacts from the Colonial era when generations of Nurse’s family lived there. At 71, Nurse was the oldest person hanged as a witch during the infamous witch trials that took place more than 300 years ago in nearby Salem, Mass. Her family homestead and 27 remaining acres are owned and preserved by the Danvers Alarm List Company, a historical preservation organization; the site is largely undisturbed. That makes it a potentially rich trove for budding archaeologists and professionals alike.
Blustain sees this as a special opportunity for local students to develop a deeper appreciation for their history, which may well be in their own back yards. “These artifacts are like messengers from the past or windows into detail not available in history books—telling us how people lived, what they were doing in their lives.”
Among last summer’s students were two from Andover, John Turiano ’10 and Gregory Hanafin ’10, who also attend Phillips Academy during the academic year. Turiano called the Nurse site “a virtual gold mine of interesting artifacts that I will always remember. The group size was small and the teachers were both entertaining and extremely educated on the subject.” Hanafin was equally enthusiastic. “It was great for anyone interested in history because it was mostly hands-on work and you got to learn exactly what an archaeological dig is like.”
Further information is available on the Phillips Academy Web site, www.andover.edu, on the Summer Session on the Peabody Museum pages. Or, interested students may contact Malinda Blustain at the Peabody Museum—978-749-4493 or mblustain@andover.edu.
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