Not a fasthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif time of year

I haven't posted for a month because nothing has happened, unless you count the NHAS meeting, during which Dick came out in hives (he claimed it was an allergy). The Exeter Historical Society was a very pleasant place to hold the meeting; we filled most of the 60 or so seats, and Dave Switzer seemed pleased to get the Chester Price Award for lifelong contributions to New Hampshire archaeology (particularly the parts underwater).

There were two presentations on the William White Collection, which Mr. White has given the NHAS. Mark, Brownie, and Jane P have been striving to catalogue it. Mr. White is getting respectably mature, and we are all lucky to have the gift of his presence and recollections to go with the artifacts. These were almost all surface- collected before there was much legal archaaeological red tape -- or protection, so his careful notes about the findspots preserve data that would otherwise have been lost, as happened to the huge numbers of artifacts found and lost in the 19th century during the mill-construction at Amoskeag Falls. It's hard not to have late 20th century feelings of horror at so much Stuff found and taken by an amateur, but things were different once. Let it be a lesson to us to take notes on everything irreversible we do.

We also heard John F.'s fleshed-out presentation on the 19th c remains at Neville II, as well as Dick's report on our summer vacation; three of the class at Franklin Pierce presented a very nice site on a riverbank that was eroding even before the October storm; and a geophysics person presented some interesting pictures showing what sort of things you can find with ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity survey: paths and the planting holes of orchard trees.

Since then we have finished the Octoberfest cataloguing and continued the Neville II cataloguing, which could be worse. Not so much slag as there was earlier in the bags.

Dick has figured out where next year's field school will be, but he wants me not to broadcast it till his waterfowl are properly deployed. You won't be able to commute to it from Keene, though, or Henniker. But there should be Stuff, of various ages, and Edna, who is a fine addition to one's site.