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Archaeology of College Hill 2008 - Home
John Brown House Archaeology Report - 2008
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
Today was our first class and also our first day in the field. When we arrived at the John Brown House, I realized that I'd walked past it a number of times on my way back to Brown from downtown and never really registered its existence. This was my first day ever doing hands-on archaeological work of any kind, so I was really excited to get started. We split into two groups, one that worked setting up two shovel test pits and one that worked on a geophysical survey. The two groups switched places halfway through the period. First, the group I was in learned about the organization system that we'll be using, which involves a zero point at an old horse hitch. We split into two more groups, and my group began to establish a shovel test pit (STP) at N0 W35. We had a little trouble at first making the STP 50 cm x 50 cm, but we got our perimeter set up and removed the topsoil. Then we switched over to the geophysics, and experienced using two devices to measure conductivity underground. After the geophysics was done, we went back to the STP and proceeded to dig. While we had been surveying, the other group that was working at our STP had been finding small white cubes, clearly human made but with no other clues as to their purpose. As we began to dig a little deeper, however, we uncovered a layer of mortar and what looked like a tile surface made of these white cubes. The excitement as this feature was revealed was infectious, and we ended up staying about 20 minutes past the class time to smooth out a layer level with the tile.
During our class today, we were taken on an abbreviated tour of the John Brown House by Dan Santos, who works with the Rhode Island Historical Society. The house itself is a fascinating mix of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, complete with portraits of the Washingtons (who were apparently friends of John Brown) and an early Otis elevator. Learning about colonial history first-hand is particularly fascinating for me, because in my hometown of Los Angeles, history is really rather limited. We get excited when a building dates back to the 1920s, so being in a house that is almost as old as the United States is a new experience for me. I also find the history of the JBH interesting because it connects so intimately with the history of Brown University, and although the actions of Brown's founders may not directly affect us today as students, it is never a bad idea to know one's own history. For the rest of the class period, we worked on continuing our STPs. While the N0 W30 STP has unearthed a variety of different soil layers, the finds in the N0 W35 STP are (to me) much more interesting. Today we uncovered another section of tile and yet more loose tiles, in addition to more mortar and pieces of brick. Whatever this feature is, it's is clearly man-made and should prove to be interesting in the future. During this process, I got the chance to be our videographer, so I recorded both teams working on the STPs and also talked a bit on tape with our guests today, which included two graduate students at the Joukowsky Institute and Chancellor Artemis Joukowsky. I was also a part of the team that's going to working on our first excavation unit. Unit 1 is a 1m x 1m plot in a depression towards the northwest end of the lawn which is surrounded by a series of stones that look as though they have been deliberately placed. We set up a perimeter of string around the excavation unit and measured the levels of all four corners. We're going to be digging down in 10 cm layers, a task which will be complicated by the fact that the excavation unit is on a slope of the depression. We'll start digging during next week's class meeting.
Today we focused on continuing our work in excavation unit 1. Like I mentioned last week, the task of going down in 10 cm levels was quite complicated because of the natural depression that our excavation unit is placed on. Nevertheless, we tried to begin by leveling the entire plot, which actually involved leaving a corner of sod remaining on the northeast side of the unit, because that point was already more than 10 cm below our datum point, the southeast corner. Another complicating factor was the fact that we found another soil type before we had dug down 10 cm in some points of the unit. This new soil type became a new natural context layer (JBH8) instead of the JBH5 context layer that we had been digging before. In the northeast corner, however, we were still encountering the JBH5 soil type once we had gone down 10 cm. Because of this, we created a new arbitrary context level, JBH9, even though this level shares soil types with JBH5. So far, we haven't found anything too exciting in our excavation unit--just some small pieces of glass, a plastic bag and what looks like sock, but we are hoping to uncover more next week!
Today, we continued our work on Unit 1. There was a storm over the weekend that brought some torrential rain, so our soil was a bit wetter and more compact than usual. We also opened up two more excavation units, so Moira left our team to work on another unit. Our digging continued in JBH8, which we tried to level off at 17cm below the datum point other than the small section of JBH9 in the northeast corner. We dug for nearly the entire period, and didn't quite manage to get the level all the way down. One of the hard parts, we have discovered, involves the nature of shoveling: when you disturb soil, it has to go somewhere else. Because of this, even when we got a section of the unit down to the correct depth, we would almost invariably throw that off by shoveling dirt onto it. Eventually, we decided to move to trowels, which helped us significantly. Today, we finally started to uncover some finds, and I believe we'll be able to find even more next week. Our finds were: a handkerchief, two pieces of glass which looked like a bottle, one of them with the letters N and O on it, a bottle cap, a piece of earthenware with a blue pattern on both sides that appears to be hand painted, and more brick fragments. There is a large brick embedded in the side of our unit which we probably won't be able to take out of the unit without disturbing the integrity of the sides. There is also some very brittle material on the south side. Hopefully next week we’ll strike (archaeological) gold!
Archaeological gold indeed. I suppose we did hit pay dirt this week but not in the way we might have expected. During our dig today, we leveled JBH8 down to 17 cm, and found that only about one cm was lying on top of the small section of JBH9 that we had left intact. When we removed this layer, we discovered the soil underneath was the same as that in JBH8, and we started a new artificial context layer, JBH18, that included the whole of the unit. The soil in this unit, however, is the same as that in JBH8. Over the course of our work today, we discovered that our unit is in effect a modern rubbish pit. We uncovered several pieces of glass and plastic bags, but what was more interesting were the identifiable modern refuse that we discovered. Among these were a carton of low fat coffee milk, the wrapper for a Maxell product that was probably either a audio or video cassette tape, what looks like a cigarette carton, a large quantity of wood that had been painted white and, best of all, a Styrofoam cup that has the words “Mister Donut” and a ridiculous logo of a winking man with a bowtie and a mustache. Apparently, Mr. Donut was a popular donut chain that was a main competitor to Dunkin’ Donuts until it was bought out by Dunkin’ Donuts parent company in 1990. So at the very least we know that the rubbish in the pit is from some time before 1990. We did, however, find the first piece of porcelain on the site, a small fragment with what looked like a hand-painted brown decoration on it. Hopefully we will be able to date some of the items that we found. We will continue to work on Unit 1 (we are now trying to dig down to 27 cm) after a one-week break for the holiday, and we are hoping that we might find some artifacts from an earlier era in lower context layers.
After a break for Columbus Day weekend, we were back at work today on Unit 1. Our work in the unit is still pretty difficult--each time we come back to dig, we have a new maze of roots to deal with. Today was no exception, and we spent a good about of our time just clearing roots out so that we'd be able to get in with the shovels and trowels. We finished work on JBH18 and started a new arbitrary context layer, JBH 24. Along with Krysta, we decided to dig JBH24 down 20 cm, which would put us at 47 cm below our datum point, because we're still clearly in fill soil and our beloved modern trash heap. Today we found more bits of glass and plastic, along with a few more unusual finds. We unearthed a piece of a Dunkin' Donuts cup (companion to our early find of a Mister Donuts cup, no doubt) and a luggage tag from North American Vanlines. We also found a small wood fragment, painted white like the other painted wood we've been encountering. Because the fragment was still relatively intact, we could see that it was a perfect match to the top of the fence posts that surround the John Brown House's yard. We do not know when the fence was built, but hopefully we'll be able to find out in the future. At any rate, this find does force us to reconsider the way we were looking at the painted wood. Although we are still clearly very much in modern context layers, we are confident that something great is going to be found under all the trash we're finding. Hopefully with the dig this Saturday and next Monday we'll get to something a bit more historic before we switch to work on other units.
Today was a breakthrough day for us. We started out where digging had left off last Saturday. We were still encountering loose fill soil, but we began to uncover a much more compact and hard soil unless the fill. Because Krysta believed that the harder soil was probably from the historic period we were looking for, we decided to level away the fill soil unless we had reached the harder level, which we would then declare a new context (JBH31). In essence, our work today consisted mostly of removing this fill soil and setting the stage for (hopefully) an exploration of the more historic context next week. Close to the bottom of the fill level (JBH24), we started encountering large deposits of charcoal, similar to the one that we had been finding throughout the fill but in far greater concentration. We also found a very small piece of actual coal. Because the charcoal was primarily at the bottom of the context layer, we believe that something (perhaps a quantity of trash similar to what we've been finding) was burned in the pit and then covered over with soil. This would explain why the concentrations of charcoal are greater towards the bottom of the layer. As usual, we unearthed quite a variety of modern trash--plastic wrappers, pieces of glass bottles, and other such debris. We did, however, come across a large piece of very rusted metal that appeared to be much older than the fill layer we've been digging through. So far, there is no sign of modern finds in JBH31, and the concentration of trash did get less and less as we dug deeper. The start of JBH31 is about 37 cm below our datum point. We're going to dig down in a 10 cm layer and consider at that point whether we should extend JBH31 to 20 cm. With any luck, we might finally be in the historical period that we've been waiting for!
Daylight savings time was clearly not intended to be helpful to late-afternoon archaeologists. Only halfway into our class period it was getting to dark to work. Today was our last full day of digging--we'll have a short time at the JBH next week and then it's into the lab full-time. We worked through JBH31 today, trying to level the layer down to 51 cm, where we will (if time permits) start a new arbitrary context layer. Our context today was definitely not like the modern layers we have been digging through and (thankfully) was surprisingly free of roots. We didn't have any major finds today, but we uncovered some pieces of nails, a few sherds with transfer print decorations on them and, of course, more brick and charcoal fragments. We also discovered some unusual wood pieces, although we are not quite sure what they are at this point. We did encounter many larger pieces of brick today, though, mostly at the northern end of our unit. It seems likely that these bricks are connected in some way to those in Unit 2, although there will be no real way for us to tell given that the area in between the two units will remain unexcavated for now. Although it is exciting to finally be working in a historical context, and I'm also looking forward to examining our finds in the lab in the weeks to come.
Today was our last day in the field, so it had a bit of a bittersweet feeling. Once again, the light cut out pretty early so we didn't have that much time to dig, so we focused most of our efforts on leveling out the unit and getting rid of the loose dirt that was left. We had a few interesting finds: once again, the standard brick and charcoal fragments, but we also found a rather large solid piece of coal, and a large piece of glass that was very uniformly constructed and seemed to be of some quality. Once we were done sifting (and as the sun was already beginning to disappear behind the horizon), we photographed each wall of our unit and a view of the unit from above. There are still no features visible, but there are a few whole bricks sticking into the unit--if we had had the time to open to more units (especially between our unit and unit 2), we probably would have encountered something connecting the features in unit 2 to our unit. After this, we worked on drawing a vertical view of the western wall of our unit in order to record the changes in stratigraphy. The process itself wasn't that hard, but our wall didn't quite match up with the different stratigraphic units that we had recorded in our field notes. This is probably due to the fact that we moved fairly quickly through the fill to the more historic layer (JBH31), and there is a clearly visible divide in the wall between where the fill was and where JBH31 began. We ended class by laying down tarps in the units along with some pennies (so that next year's class can return to the spots we dug in), and then filled the units with dirt, folding the tarps back on themselves so that there were completely underground. It was a bit of a bizarre experience to shovel dirt into a hole that we had been removing dirt from for so long and to see our weeks of work virtually vanish before our eyes. But the work really isn't over; instead, it's on to a new phase, and I look forward to experiencing the lab aspect of our course in the weeks to come.
Today was our first full class period in the lab. I found it much easier to function at 3 in the afternoon rather than 8 am, so I'm glad we have this Mondays to work with the artifacts. We started class with a brief overview of the different types of pottery that we would be encountering from the dig. Krysta's overview was really helpful--I actually found myself washing sherds and being able to make an educated guess about the type of pottery that I was looking at. We spent the rest of class washing artifacts, starting as a group with Unit 1 and then goes up from there. Washing is actually much more enjoyable than I might have thought. A piece of pottery or glass can literally be transformed after it is cleaned. For instance, I worked on washing a small dirty piece of glass that ended up being a beautiful blue color after all of the dirt was removed. I look forward to finishing our cleaning and moving onto engaging with the artifacts as a whole.
This was our second full day in the lab, and we spent most of our time washing and cataloguing artifacts. For about the first half or two thirds of class, we finished cleaning the artifacts, and then moved onto organizing them. We split into two groups, and my group worked on labeling the diagnostic items that we've found. In essence, this involves writing tiny letters on pieces of glass and pottery, a skill that was not easy for me to attain. First, we put a thin layer of nail polish on the artifact, and then label it with permanent marker to reflect the context layer in which it was found. We tried to keep our writing as small as possible, so that it could be legible but also allow an observer to see the artifact without being distracted by the context number. I made a lot of mistakes, so I was probably the most frequent user of the nail polish remover. I also spoke with Krysta today to get a better idea of the final project that I'll be working on next week. My project is stratigraphy, which means that I'll basically make the unit reports my best friends in order to draw some conclusions about the overall soil composition that we came across in our work. Next week is going to be a lot of work, but I also think it's going to be really interesting to explore the stratigraphy of our site.
Today was our last full class period in the field. My work today consisted entirely of cataloguing, which is basically just the creation of a written record that describes precisely what artifacts were found on the dig. I worked on Unit 3, going context by context and creating a sheet for each individual artifact that details its type, class, variety and distinguishing characteristics. Although the work can be a bit repetitive after a while (it certainly isn't as much fun as working in the field), it was still interesting to interact with the artifacts now that they're clean and make interpretive assessments. I can finally tell the difference between creamware, whiteware and pearlware (usually) on my own, which is a good feeling. Our work in the lab has also given me a really good of how much work in archaeology occurs after the dig. In the sort of romantic, Indiana Jones version of the discipline, a few shovelfuls unearths complete statues and cities, with impeccable interpretation occurring within moments. In the real discipline, the work of interpretation doesn't really even begin until the lab stage, and of course conclusive interpretations are not easy to come to, especially when you're a first-time archaeologist. Even though I may not enjoy the lab work the same way that I enjoyed the field work, I can tell that I'm getting a more holistic view of the discipline. But I have to admit that since we're not working at the John Brown House anymore, I am pretty jealous of the students who will get to work there next year. Hopefully they'll have a community archaeology day like we did and this year's students will be able to go back and relive digging at the JBH!