Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 61) erecting orange flags every ten meters, before digging the onefoot square test pits. For each artifact, Mann took a photo-graph and identified its find location. He has a trove of clues. What’s next? “We would create a digital map of Glen Cambre’s excavated yard,” said Mann, juxtaposing the situation of the trenches and the location where each item was found. He would then “create a narrative about what we found, which may lead to a report.” And, since one of his duties as Southeast Regional Archeologist is public outreach, he will talk about Galveztown to the public at as many events as he can. “And I may eventually write a journal article.” Through the discovery and interpretation of physical artifacts, archeology seeks to understand how humans of the past interacted with their environment, offering different information than documents and maps can convey. So perhaps someday, the rest of Galveztown’s story will be known — where its buildings and fields were situated, how its residents lived and died, worked and played. For now, however, these secrets remain buried. LCV Mary Ann Sternberg serves as internship coordinator for the Manship School of Mass Communications at LSU in Baton Rouge. Her most recent book, Winding Through Time: The Forgotten History and Present-Day Peril of Bayou Manchac, was published by LSU Press in 2007. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. top: Rob Mann, Southeast Regional Archeologist for the state of Louisiana. left: Broken glass, shards of pottery, pieces of smoking pipes and building materials are among the artifacts unearthed at the Galveztown digs. PHOTO BY GINI MCKAIN Spring 2009/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 61 LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI VALLEY COLLECTION PHOTO BY MARY ANN STERNBERG
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