"Is this anything?"

On a sunny afternoon in June, Osborne and his mother have been collecting, sifting, and sorting through excavated material for hours. They are among the nearly 400 volunteers who assisted with the excavation of an archeological site at Vashon Island's Burton Acres Park. The two-week excavation was co-sponsored by the Burke Museum, the King County Landmarks and Heritage Commission, Vashon Island's McMurray Middle School, and the Puyallup Tribe.

Unlike most excavations, this dig had public education as a central element. The idea, says Julie Stein, UW professor of anthropology and curator of archaeology at the Burke Museum, was to help people understand what archaeology is about by involving them in the process.

"Many people think of archaeologists as being like Indiana Jones," says Stein, who directed the excavation. "You drop into a site until you find 'the treasure' and then you jump out of the site and take the treasure to a museum. But what archaeologists really do is find pieces to a puzzle. As anyone who has done a jigsaw puzzle knows, there's no one piece that's more important than another."

At the Vashon site, a few pieces of the puzzle were already in place. Researchers knew that the site was a shell midden, used by Indians for drying fish and shellfish. ("Midden" comes from a Scandinavian word meaning material that accumulates around a dwelling.) The excavation is helping them date the site and learn more about the Indians' contact with other groups. "Each bone or chip of a tool that we find makes the picture clearer," says Stein. "People participating in the dig understood that. When they found a piece of bone or shell, whether common or unusual, they knew that they were helping to solve the puzzle."

People came from all over the state to join in the excavation, having heard about it in the media. Many, like the Osbornes, came as a family. UW President Richard McCormick participated with his family. Children's show host Bill Nye "The Science Guy" visited with a television crew and plans to air a segment on the excavation this fall. Students from McMurray Middle School, Vashon High School, and Chief Leschi School on the Puyallup Reservation led regular tours of the site and videotaped portions of the excavation.

"I spent every day there the first week and half days there the second week," says Michele Guthrie, a ninth grader at Vashon High School. "I thought it would be something like Jurassic Park--there would be whole things to dig up and you could just dust them off with a brush," she admits, "but I kind of like this better. You actually have to sort through the material and figure things out."

Participants experienced all parts of the excavation process with professional archaeologists guiding them through the steps. First they used a small trowel to excavate a portion of the site, collecting shell-laden dirt into a bucket. Then they sifted the dirt through a series of screens to separate the material by size. Next they sorted the material into separate piles for shell, stone, bones, and other materials. All shells and fish bones went to the identification table to be analyzed by archaeologists. Finally the sorted materials were catalogued. The entire enterprise could take nearly half a day.

Guthrie was surprised to learn that the actual excavation is the briefest part of the process, taking no more than fifteen minutes. In contrast, sorting can take up to three hours. "I like doing the sorting," says Guthrie. "I have a lot of patience. And sorting is where you find most of the shells and glass." Classmate Rachel Marcley had a different view. "I hated sorting," she groans. "It takes hours on end. It's a lot more tedious than I thought it would be." Nevertheless both students say that they would consider a career in archaeology, having learned about the process.

Stein says that many parents at the excavation were surprised that their pre-teen children remained focused through hours of digging and sorting. "It held their interest because it was discovery," says Stein. "It was education at its best, combining oral, visual, and tactile information." People asked many questions while sorting, looking to the professional archaeologists to provide answers. Seven paid archaeologists were on-site at all times; usually three or four others volunteered for shorter periods.

By the end of the excavation, some intriguing clues had been unearthed. A surprising number of "trade goods" were found, such as glass, metal nails, spikes, and brass buttons of a style dating back to the mid- to late-1800s. "I never anticipated that we would find so many historic artifacts indicating contact with Europeans," says Stein. "This was definitely a Native American Indian site, but there are many signs of trade." On the final day of excavation, pre-contact deposits were unearthed with nary a button or metal nail in sight. "We don't know how much older those deposits are," says Stein. "It could be 200 years or 900 years."

To get a clearer picture, Stein has selected ten items found at various depths to be carbon dated. The process is expensive--$250 per object--but it should answer some of the archaeolgists' questions about the site. "We're going to date mostly shell, because the carbon signature of a shell is very good," says Stein. "The dating can be fairly precise. If the items come back with inconsistencies--showing more recent dates at lower depths and older dates on top, for example--we may select additional materials for carbon dating."

Funding for the carbon dating and other expenses of the excavation has been provided by several groups including the King County Landmarks and Heritage Commission and the University of Washington's College of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School, and Office of Research.

For those interested in Julie Stein's findings, the archaeologist will describe the Vashon project and her conclusions in a public lecture in 220 Kane Hall on January 22 at 7:30 p.m. For more information, call 685-3849.