Ben's Field Blog

WEEK 1

After a brief introduction to the course in Salomon 202, off to the John Brown House we went! We were divided into two groups, and first on the agenda for mine were some geophysics tests with a resident Brown geophysicist, Tommy. We all were trained in the use of two fairly unassuming but outrageously expensive pieces of equipment and proceeded to make a survey of an area deemed to be of interest by previous geophysics work. This involved walking in straight lines at a controlled speed while holding the relevant equipment.

Following that, my group began digging in pits that the other group had laid out. The pit I was assigned to already had nails sitting right on top of the soil -- a good sign, I thought. Krysta went over the basics of digging, troweling, sifting, and notating our findings, and then we began our work in earnest. While my pit produced several rusty nails, the second pit eventually produced tiles complete with grout.

Overall, this was a great experience and I'm quite happy I signed up for this course (8 AM section aside!).

WEEK 2

This week we all got a quick tour of the John Brown House itself, which was quite interesting. I would have liked to have seen the upstairs areas, but the tour guide told us we could come back whenever we want so it seems likely that eventually I will anyway. The "tree that ate Roger Williams" was pretty amusing.

Concerning the dig, we continued excavations on pits 1 and 2. I was personally working on the tile pit this time, and we continued to find more tiles as well as two big bricks, a shard of glass, and a lot of mortar. We decided, after enough tiles had been unearthed, to call this area "feature 1" and then spent most of our class time carefully digging and dusting around the individual items to prepare the pit for a photo. After taking the photo, digging all the findings out was great fun. The other pit continued to produce nothing of real interest, though it did go through a soil type change.

WEEK 3

Peter and I finished off the first STP this week. Digging about 10 cm past where we dug last week, we encountered a suspiciously square rock and the top of what may well be a deposit of hundreds of oyster shells (plus two clam shells). The sheer quantity and tight concentration suggests that this was a dumping ground for these things and that they were deposited around the mid-1800s, when oysters were still plentiful in Rhode Island. The shells were sitting atop a layer of clay and were surprisingly degraded; little force was required to crush them to dust. Before leaving, we made a sketch of the south wall.

The test pit was closed off after we left and next week we get to open a new unit over the big blue geophysics feature, which could be exciting.

WEEK 4

Moira, Elise and I opened up a new unit today along the west edge of the property near the fence. I learned how to, using a level, determine the variable digging depths that result from using arbitrary levels -- we are using 10 cm levels for this unit. It was great fun shoveling out the grass. The dirt was heavy and filled with worms and grubs, and proved quite difficult to sift, but amidst it all we managed to find several pieces of glazed ceramics. One was identified by Krysta as being an 1830s double-sided transfer print likely adorning a tea cup or the like, and another was determined to be part of the bowl of an early 18th century tobacco pipe. We also found another wonderful rusty nail.

We finished the day by readying the pit for a photo, and next week we will dig to at least an additional 10 cm. Hopefully we'll find some larger pieces!