Vol. 115, Iss. 4 | Wednesday, April 2, 2025
The Weekly Student Newspaper
of The College of William and Mary
flathatnews.com | @theflathat
COURTESY IMAGE / COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION
KYLIE TOTTEN / THE FLAT HAT
The Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center will feature state-of-the-art laboratories visible to the public, classrooms for community learning opportunities and reimagined collections featuring the newest artifacts.
Colonial Williamsburg archaeology center opens in 2026, new project underway Peter Scott site, across from Bruton Parish Church, reveals secrets on 18th-century life SUSANNAH POTEET // CHIEF STAFF WRITER The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation will open the Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center in 2026, allowing visitors to see firsthand the archaeological process in the lab. The new center will also offer a never-before-seen view of the most significant artifacts discovered since archaeologists broke ground in Williamsburg nearly 100 years ago. Director of Archaeology at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Jack Gary ’00 emphasized the uniqueness of the center in what it offers to the public and contains as a functioning archaeological laboratory." “The building is literally transparent. There's windows into our labs,” Gary said." " This aspect of the center differentiates it from a typical museum, as it encourages visitors to view and engage with laboratory processes. These include x-rays, cleaning and analyzing found artifacts." “Whereas a museum, yes, people work
there, but they're behind the scenes,” Gary said. “Ours is the actual workspace. You will see people in the lab.” The new lab inside of the center w ill offer many chang es to the storag e and display of ar tifacts excavate d from Colonial William sburg. After excavation, artifacts may start to degrade and oxidize. Iron artifacts are particularly susceptible to this process. The new laborator y in the archaeology center will feature a low-humidity room dedicated to storing metal artifacts so that they do not degrade. The heart of the center will be the study collection, containing the most significant artifacts from the past 100 years of excavation." “It's the materials that really help us to recreate and understand Colonial Williamsburg,” Gary said. “And they will be in a central room, all glass. You'll be able to see these things in the exhibit space all along
it. So, yeah, we're showing off.” The new center will not limit visitors to only viewing artifacts and the lab process ; the public will be able to engage in archaeology themselves through hands-on activities." One of these hands-on experiences could potentially be washing and cleaning small artifacts, like animal teeth, that have newly arrived at the lab." “The first step in the process for this thing when it comes to the lab is to be washed,” Gary said. “We may start inviting people to do those simple processes.” The center will also offer a new educational experience for visitors to Colonial Williamsburg." However, for current students at the College of William and Mary, there are currently multiple other ways to become involved with archaeology in Williamsburg." The college offers the National Institute of American History and Democracy certificate
program in Public History and Material Culture. The program works with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to offer both field work experiences and internships." “We currently teach three classes in the anthropology department for William and Mary,” Gary said. “And we do a summer field school, so you can come, and you can dig alongside us for six credits.” One of the active dig sites is the Peter Scott site. Peter Scott was a prominent cabinet and furniture maker in 18th-century Williamsburg, and his finished works appear in the Colonial Williamsburg Art Museum. First excavated in 1958, archaeologists returned to the site in January 2025 to further understand unanswered questions that the 1958 team left." One of those new focuses is the role of enslaved laborers at the Peter Scott site." See AROUND THE 'BURG page 3
CAMPUS
Muscarelle hosts art discussion panel with neuroscientist, ethnomusicologist Drs. Bestman, Iyanaga share respective disciplines' perspectives on music, artistic creation SAM BELMAR FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR
Friday, March 28, the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the Martha Wren Briggs Center for the Visual Arts hosted its first installment of a new lecture series, Art in Conversation, aimed at bringing professors together to discuss how their research connects to the arts. John & Audrey Leslie Associate Professor of Music and Latin American Studies Michael Iyanaga and associate professor of biology Jennifer Bestman offered insights on their work in ethnomusicology and neuroscience." The talk was organized by the museum’s newest student group, Museum University Student Engagement, which intends to increase student interest in the visual arts by hosting events for students of all backgrounds. Muscarelle interns and MUSE co-founders Max Belmar ’25 and Sierra Manja ’26 moderated the discussion." Each professor began with an
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introduction to the group. Bestman explained that her neuroscience background gives her a more scientific perspective on how the brain processes sound waves before perceiving them as music." “When I think about music, I think about sound and how sound makes our sense organ, our ear and our cochlea work,” Bestman said. “I think about sound waves and the way the tympanic membrane and how hair cells can transduce. How do cells encode things in our environment? How does a sound wave make a neuron make an action potential?” Bestman explained that all kinds of organisms are neurologically attuned to rhythm. “Neurons love rhythm, brains love rhythm,” she said. “Insects are rhythmic animals and they communicate through rhythm. Our cells like to oscillate and have high periods and low periods. Not knowing anything about how the brain turns that into something emotional. I would think that we
are built for rhythm.” Iyanaga specializes in the study of Latin American music and wrote his dissertation on Brazilian music tradition. He outlined the focus of ethnomusicology, which considers music as a culturallyconstructed phenomenon." “Ethno comes from ethnography or ethnos, it comes from people,” Iyanaga said. “And musicology comes from the study of music. What the discipline suggests, and what I actually do believe, is that music is made up by people. In other words, nothing is inherently music.”" Iyanaga elaborated that the definition of music shifts based on cultural context." “There are cultures in which music is defined very specifically,” he said. “The chanting or singing of the Quran, for instance, is not music in that particular context because music is secular. It’s something else. All sound could or could not be music depending on how you’re defining music from the outset.” Bestman talked about her current
research in neurodevelopment and the mechanisms which drive the creation of 86 billion neurons. She described the beauty of her observations at the cellular level, which she saw as a form of natural art." “I think my cells are beautiful, they’re fluorescent, they have sparkly things that move inside them,” Bestman said. “When I show my data to the world, I’m not going to show you the ugly ones, I’m going to show you the beautiful cells that represent my work. There are choices that I make in order to tell my story to scientists.” Iyanaga touched on the intuitive emotional response to artistic creations that his ethnomusicology research has uncovered." “What makes something beautiful is that you can’t describe it,” he said. "It makes you feel something. If you tried to analyze the thing, you’d go, ‘I like the way it makes me feel.' What’s most exciting is when you’re drawn to something intuition-wise.” Iyanaga’s research on Brazilian
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music focuses on the social phenomenon of collective singing, where communities create music for enjoyment rather than as a commercial product. He shared that these forms of music are rarely considered art." “What I think is most interesting is people who make music who don’t call themselves musicians,” Iyanaga said. “And no one else would either. That’s fun to me.” Bestman recalled a similar experience she had in an undergraduate art history course where she learned about traditional quilt-making. The course expanded her perspective on what should be considered artistic creation in a modern world." “Why do we admire modern art and abstract painting when women have been creating similar things out of pieces of cloth for generations? It’s a practice that we should admire as much as any fancy painter,” Bestman said. READ MORE AT FLATHATNEWS.COM
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