Class Journals 2007 - Dan | Archaeology of College Hill 2007

September 17, 2007

Today was our first day digging at the First Baptist Church. I have another class in the early afternoon, so I arrived at the FBC a little late. A few other students arrived around the same time as me and we were assigned to set up trench C1 in the northwest corner of the property just off Angell Street. It proved slightly more difficult than expected to lay out a 1 meter x 1 meter trench with one side facing north using stakes and string. However, we thought things through, applied ourselves, and were successful on our second attempt. After outlining the boundaries of the trench we removed the grass and began digging. All of the dirt that was removed from the trench was sifted through a large mesh seive. Almost immediately we began finding small pieces of broken glass and sections of twisted metal wire. The metal appears to have originally been part of a chainlink fence (in fact the rusted stubs of the posts that probably supported this fence are visible on the wall next to the trench). We also found a large piece of brick and a suprising number of chuncks of coal. By the end of the day we had dug about to a depth of about 12cm and had a small bag filled with the items we found (mostly small pieces of glass and coal). Now that I'm more familiar with the process of digging in the trenches, I think I'll make more significant progress next week.

September 24, 2007

This past Monday was the second day of digging at the FBC. I was working in trench D4 this time, which is on the north edge of the property, just west of trench C1 where I had worked the previous week. SU 1 and 2 had been excavated last week, and Cindy and I finished SU3. SU4 was a large clay lump in the center of the trench that cut through SU 2 and 3. As we dug through SU3 we found a lot of relatively modern looking nails, chunks of coal, and pieces of brick or tile. We also found a number of large chunks of what initially appeared to be rocks, but upon closer inspection turned out to be chunks of slag, presumably left over from near-by smelting. It appears that the area contains a great deal of construction waste, but we can't be sure from which period the constuction dates from without further analysis. After we were through with SU3 and had dug to a depth of 30cm (around the SU4, the large clay lump) I began to dig through SU4, the clay pedestal. Somewhat suprisingly, the clay contained artifacts similar to those found in the dirt surrounding it (SU3). I only dug through a small portion of the clay (which is very compact and difficult to dig up) before it was time to clean up, but I found nails, cement, mortar, and brick in this layer. It will be exciting to see how far down in the trench these construction-related artifacts continue to appear.

October 1, 2007

I continued to work in trench D4 this week. Melissa (a student from last year's class who was helping out for the day) and I finished excavating the 'clay pedestal' (SU4), which turned out to be similar to the layer that had surrounded it (SU3) (the pedestal was composed primarily of compact dirt with pockets of grey clay). SU4 contained a very large quantity of nails, bolts, and tacks as well as a great deal of glass fragments and a few ceramic brick fragments. We continued to find large quantities of slag and coal, but the slag is generally confined to the northern edge of the trench. As we dug through SU4 we also noticed small pieces of charcoal and patches of blackened, and apparently burnt, soil. When the pedestal had been removed and the bottom of the trench had been levelled out to depth of about 30cm, a rectangular area of blackened soil that ran the length of the northern edge of the trench became apparent. The edge of the area of blackened soil was a nearly perfect line, which could mean that the area was cut through at a later date in time and subsequently refilled with different soil. Melissa mentioned that the church underwent fairly extensive renovation in the 1950's. It seems probable that most of the construction waste we're finding in D4 was deposited at that time (although the materials found may pre-date that time, as they may have been removed from the church). It looks as though constuction waste was dumped near D4 during a renovation project and then burned, leaving behind nails, glass, and brick.

October 15, 2007

Most of the afternoon was spent using remote sensing techniques to survey the grounds around the Nightingale Brown House. The Nightingale Brown House is a potential site for subsequent seasons of the Archaeology of College Hill Project. We set up a series of parallel lines separated by 0.5 meters around the property. We then walked along each line taking measurements at regular intervals with one of two instruments: a magnetometer and an electromagnetic induction instrument. I used the electromagnetic induction instrument, which is known as a GEM. When combined, data from both instruments should give a fairly complete picture of the subsurface features of the site. After finishing my part of the survey, I went over to the FBC to continue digging. I was once again in D4, but only dug for about 45 minutes. I continued to find construction materials like nail, brick, and glass fragments.

October 22, 2007

This week I dug in trench D2, in the southwest corner of the site for the first time. It was so warm this week that it was borderline uncomfortable. Just before I arrived Cindy uncovered a fragment of the bowl of a clay pipe in D2. Trench D2 has gotten fairly deep (over 50cm) making it somewhat awkward to dig in. However, as we continued to dig we found a cluster of ceramic fragments in a roughly circular shape. The cluster may be a nearly complete, but shattered, saucer or cup. The soil composition quickly became sandy with pockets of dark soil. As we dug deeper an increasingly large number of brick fragments began to show up, and we eventually uncovered a number of bricks in the northeast corner that appeared to be organized in a quarter of a ring (the rest of the ring, if it exists, would be outside the area of the trench). We mapped the locations of the bricks before removing them. A fairly large number of clam shells and some small to medium sized chunks of charcoal were found at the same level as the bricks. It seems that the bricks may surround a hearth where food was prepared for a picnic or some other gathering.

October 29, 2007

I was back working in trench D4 this week. This was our last week of actual digging and it was really cold. I leveled off an SU which was originally identified as an area of black soil. The layer of black soil was actually quite thin and receded into the back wall as I dug through it. There were less artifacts present in this SU than I had found in earlier SU's in D4. After the trench had been leveled off, I measured and divided the trench into quarters and excavated the southwest corner (the idea was to dig as deep as possible in this quarter before the end of the day and the end of excavations in the trench). The soil in the southwest quarter quickly became sand as I dug. The quarter also contained a very large number of rocks ranging in size from small to large, but the quarter contained almost no artifacts. Hopefully this means that we dug as deep as was necessary to obtain artifacts from the trench.

November 5, 2007

This week was our last meeting at the FBC, and we collected the last of the data from each trench including a closing photograph, soil samples, a top plan, and a section of two of the trench walls. Maddie and I measured and drew a top plan and two sections for trench D4. The stratigraphy in D4 is actually very complex, and measuring and drawing the plans took quite a bit of time. When we finished we joined everyone else in filling in the trenches. We filled the trenches bucket by bucket and thanks to the end of daylight savings time, it was dark by the time we finished. Next week we'll be meeting in the lab to start analyzing artifacts.

November 12, 2007

This week was our first week in the lab. This first lab meeting was devoted to washing all of the artifacts. I washed countless brick, glass, and ceramic fragments using a toothbrush and a basin of water. Although the washing was a little dull, I was glad to be inside (its gotten really cold out). To preserve the provenance of the artifacts each section of a drying rack was labeled with an SU and artifacts from the corresponding SU were placed in that section. Washing the nails and other metal objects would have done more damage to than good and so these were just brushed off and placed in the drying rack. As the contents of each SU were spread out in the drying racks, it became obvious that some SU's had yielded far more artifacts than others. Next week we'll start to work on our individual final paper topics.

November 19, 2007

This week we began to work on our individual final topics. My final topic is "planning an exhibit and curation," so I spent the first part of class looking through the artifacts and thinking about how to approach an exhibit. Since this is historical archaeology, I decided to connect the artifacts to primary historical sources and to present the artifacts and sources in a chronological or thematic order. After picking out a few artifacts that I thought may be useful for an exhibit, I didn't have much else to do. So, I helped with the analysis of the artifacts by separating and labeling some of the artifact categories that were not assigned as final topics. Specifically, I separated and labeled mortar/cement fragments and plastics. I also briefly helped collecting and labeling brick and glass fragments. It looks like we only have one more meeting in the lab where I'll need to look through the artifacts more thoroughly and make final decisions about what to include in the exhibit (I still need to decide whether to include a representative sample of the artifacts or to include only the more interesting artifacts).

Dan
Field Team
Home