University of Southern Maine

News Releases

USM Professor Teaching Field School on Isle of Shoals

August 1, 2008

When University of Southern Maine Associate Professor of Archeology Nathan Hamilton identifies centuries-old potshards, buttons, and coins found on recent digs on Smuttynose Island, Isle of Shoals, and he sounds like an expert on “Antiques Roadshow” rather than the biological archeologist he is.  Hamilton can identify the age and place of origin of the fragments of European salt glaze and earthenware vessels and other signs of human habitation on Smuttynose which allows him to know the age of the true subjects of his research; the animal and fish bones.

Hamilton will be teaching a field school on Smuttynose this summer.  He and his students will use the remains of sea creatures to write an environmental history of the Gulf of Maine that will look at temperature, pollution, and biological invasions like that of the European green crab.  European green crabs were introduced through shipping over 150 years ago on the northeast coast of the U.S., but have only recently invaded west coast waters.  Writing this environmental history will help scientists understand better global warming and other environmental changes taking place today.  Hamilton explains that because Smuttynose has no trees, the soil lacks acidity allowing the bones of animals and marine life to survive without decay.

The field school is run through Cornell University, and Hamilton and his students will stay in Cornell’s Shoals Marine Lab on nearby Appledore Island.  All excavated samples will be processed in Hamilton’s lab at USM, Gorham.

Hamilton, his assistant Ingrid B. Brack, a 2007 graduate of USM now in graduate school at the University of Reading in Berkshire, U.K., and Robin Hadlock Seeley, assistant director for the Shoals Marine Lab, and the students will depart from the Isle of Shoals dock, Portsmouth, New Hampshire at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, August 4.  To reach Hamilton or Seeley, call 607-379-3342.  

>more news releases

^ top