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The Sandrocks Shelter Archaeological Research Project
The Archaeology Lab at UPG
The thousands of field specimens recovered from the Sandrocks Shelter, including stone, pottery, bone, shell, and textiles are brought to the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. There, in the Archaeology Laboratory (est. 1989), they are processed and examined. Designed for archaeological research and undergraduate education, the lab serves as a facility for cleaning and cataloging, photographing, illustrating, analyzing, and storing specimens from on-going field projects. The lab maintains a large comparative collection of specimens and raw materials for analyzing stone artifacts. Lab stations are fully-equipped for conducting many types of basic analysis. A special feature is a Zeiss 50 binocular microscope with a 35mm camera port and a dual-view ocular for teacher-student viewing.
The Archaeology Laboratory also houses the Artifact Casting Facility. Established in 1996, it serves to extend the research and educational capabilities of the laboratory (no courses are offered in this area). Epoxy resin thermoplastic cast replicates of stone and bone artifacts recovered from prehistoric sites serve a number of useful purposes in contemporary archaeology for comparative analysis, classroom instruction, and museum display. The casting facility at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg is one of the few of its kind in the country, especially in the eastern United States.