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Archaeology of College Hill 2006
Archaeology of College Hill 2007
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology
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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]
Note: this is a summary of the day's events. Full fieldnotes forthcoming!
Today was a beautiful day for excavation! The sun was out and it had not rained for several days. Excavations began at 1pm, and initially focused on the eastern side of the Church, in units A1, A3, and A4.
Last week A4 was divided in half, and the western side was excavated to a depth of 80 cm. This week, the eastern side of the unit was excavated to approximately 70 cm. This exposed a series of rocks on the east, which form a small alignment extending across the bottom of the unit on the far eastern side.
We decided to quarter the units, so that excavation could proceed deeper, sooner than was otherwise possible. One quarter was then chosen as a focus unit, much like a shovel test or auger hole. This quarter will be excavated in the coming weeks.
Unit A3 was quartered, and the northeastern side chosen for a deeper analysis. There was a soil change, to an orange-ish sediment unlike the brown silty sediments of the previous layers (Lots 1-3). This natural strata was excavated, and shortly revealed an iron pipe running north-south through the quarter.
The iron pipe appears to connect with our "pipe" datum located a few meters to the south of the unit. The presence of a rusty pipe give credence to the "oil tank" theory for the magnetic anomaly discovered via the ground penetrating resistivity examination.
Likewise, the other units were opened as students arrived. By 3:30pm, all the units were in full swing. Around this time, WJAR-NBC 10 arrived to film the excavation, and we also were visited by Brown University's press personnel and a Providence Journal photographer. They came to film the crew in action, and provide the community with an explanation for our actions. The excavations were mentioned on the 6pm newscast, and a brief write-up appeared on the Brown University Media Relations page and Providence Journal web-page.
The other units continued to contribute to our collection of artifacts. Several small canisters, perhaps makeup containers were found in B1 as well as a small decorated teacup fragment. Unit B2 had a small decorated tea-plate fragment. Unit B3 remained full of roots, despite Christian Pinon's efforts to remove a few by force. Likewise, A3 is full of tree roots, which makes it difficult to excavate that area. Although Cody and Lindsey did encounter a pipe stem in the unit.
On October 28, 10am-1pm we will be hosting the First Baptist Church community for an archaeological field day, to which the congregants are all invited.