May 2025 Quarterly Meeting Agenda

Archaeological Society of New Jersey

maY 2025 Meeting

Meeting date: Saturday, May 17, 2025 10am-3:15pm

Venue: Visitor Center Auditorium, Batsto Village Historic Site

Address: 31 Batsto Road, Hammonton, NJ 08037

Board Meeting  

10:00 am – 11:30 am: Executive Board Meeting (All Members Welcome)

11:30 am – 12:00 pm: Break for Lunch (On your own)

Public Lecture SerieS & Tour

12:00 pm: President’s Welcome and Announcements

Danielle Cathcart (Laboratory and Collections Manager, Richard Grubb & Associates, Inc.)

Miss Lippincott at the Well: A Story of a Colonial Medicine Vial and a Modern CRM Lab

At some point between the late 17th and 18th centuries, a young woman in the affluent Lippincott family in Eastampton Township sought treatment from a local druggist who supplied the bespoke medicine in a plain glass vial. Once the contents were consumed and it was of no further use to Miss Lippincott, the vial was tossed in the family's well where it sat, relatively undisturbed and only slightly worse for wear, until an archaeologist arrived a few hundred years later. The vial made its way to Richard Grubb and Associates where it underwent the standard processing and analysis procedures of a modern cultural resource management (CRM) lab. The story of Miss Lippincott's vial and it's unlikely survival into the 21st century is at once remarkable and a fairly ordinary lab-side glimpse of a CRM project.

Michael Gall (Principal Senior Archaeologist, Richad Grubb & Associates, Inc.)
Quite a Conundrum! Ephemeral 19th-Century Dwellings in Thompson Park, Middlesex County.

Bobbi Hornbeck, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Stockton University), Rain Crowley (Sociology/Anthropology Program, Stockton University)
Cistern, Well, Cesspit, or Portal: Investigating the Unknown at the Cresse-Holmes House

The Digging History project is a long-term collaboration between the Museum of Cape May County and Stockton University's Archaeological Field Methods course. The project aims to explore landscape use at the historic Cresse-Holmes House (circa 1704/1830). This semester, a newly discovered feature has ignited a great deal of speculation. Utilizing a variety of contextual clues, the students have developed several working theories regarding the origins and function of the mysterious feature. This presentation reviews the contextual data, developing interpretations, and other analytical considerations surrounding the feature and offers insight into historic landscape use in Cape May County.

1:00 pm: Break – Artifact Display by Jack Cresson & Light Refreshments

1:30pm: Sean Kane-Holland (Historian, Batsto Village Historic Site; Access Nature Disability Advocate, Pinelands Preservation Alliance)
Batsto at War: Revolutionary and the American Civil War eras.

John Hebble (Resource Interpretive Specialist, Batsto Village Historic Site)
Lecture Topic: Archaeology at Batsto

2:00 pm: Closing Remarks

2:15 pm: Walking Tour of Batsto Village (60 minutes)

We look forward to seeing you there!

The ASNJ May 2025 Quarterly Meeting is planned for Saturday, October 18th, 2025 at Thompson Park in Monmouth County. If interested in presenting at a future ASNJ meeting, please contact the Program Chair at asnj.presentations@gmail.com.

Flyer courtesy of Rebecca Ashdot