Class Journals 2007 - Mark | Archaeology of College Hill 2007

September 17, 2007

Day 1: The first day of digging at the FBC was a bit surreal. Having had virtually no prior experience with any aspect of field archaeology, I wandered down college hill nervous yet excited. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon with a fair breeze, perfect weather for outside labor. Within minutes of arriving, I was assigned to lay out a trench and, armed with a compass, measuring tape, stakes, and strings, I begun a hilarious but ultimately fruitful attempt at creating an exact 1m X 1m grid. Trench set up, I and Nicole began to remove grass from the plot and slowly excavate the top 10cm of dirt. Excavating was a slow process, as we were moving very small amounts of dirt at one time. However, after doing it for a while, we had multiple buckets full of dirt, which we then began to sift for artifacts. Oddly, the most common thing we found was a bulbous plant root that seemed to be in great abundance around the church. We found small shards of glass (seemingly contemporary), an old rusty nail, and a pearl-coloured bead of which the age and authenticity were both unknown. Ultimately, the first day of digging was a major success in that I learned the ropes, or at least some basic skills, of excavation without having to go through a boring introduction or primer. Jumping right in to the fieldwork was a great opportunity to learn some of these skills hands-on, and as a result I will return next week more comfortable in my knowledge and more prepared to tackle a large chunk of work efficiently.

September 24, 2007

The second day of digging at the FBC was decidedly less hectic than the first. Upon arrival, I began excavating trench D2 with Scott, hoping to penetrate at least one more 10cm layer into the ground before the period ended. We got this far and more; keeping what Kate described as "a trench she would eat out of," we worked our way into the trench leaving intact certain portions that seemed to be of a different composition than the soil around them. While we have yet to conclusively figure out what these areas are, we suspect they might be holes that once contained wooden posts, or perhaps root structures of plants that were once there. In digging around these areas, we were also fortunate enough to uncover two terra cotta sherds, what looks like a piece of china pottery, and various small rocks that appear as though they were altered by human contact.

One thing that has interested me alot is how little we know--at least right now--about how old each layer we encounter actually is. We have little basis for assigning ages to anything we find, and until we learn those techniques and enter the lab we will probably not know the degree to which our depth in a trench corresponds to an historical period. As such, we are totally in the dark as to whether what we find should or should not be notable; if a rusty nail in our trench is from the 1970's, it's probably not going to pique our interest as much as if it were from the 1870's. I look forward to determining and contextualizing the ages and relative ages of each layer of our trench and the items that we find there.

October 1, 2007

Our third week of digging at the First Baptist Church saw an initial taste of chilly weather to come as well as some fascinating and exciting discoveries. I worked in trench C2 with Maia and Scott, and our first task was to dig our trench down to a natural layer characterized by a slightly yellow, clay-like soil. This work was not easy; while the soil was visually distinct from the layers above it, it was quite difficult to know exactly when to stop digging at any given spot in the trench, especially because the natural layer appeared to be rather uneven. On our way down to this layer, we unearthed a large, rusty nail as well as a great deal of glass. The glass was mainly clear, but there were also some green sherds. The most notable feature of the glass was its abundance; we must have found at least 30 sherds in the course of less than two hours. Once we established our natural layer, we photographed it and continued to excavate. I stumbled upon a cool-looking pottery sherd that turned out to be painted on both sides! The design appears to be pastoral in nature; one can distinguish a farmhouse and some rolling fields. I am very excited to examine this piece in the lab and compare it to other china designs to discover its origins and compositon. As we neared the end of the day, we began to strike a huge amount of brick pieces in our trench. They weren't oriented in any obvious pattern, which leads me to believe that they may have simply fallen onto the lawn during the construction of the brick sidewalk that surrounds the yard. I'm not sure when this sidewalk was built, but it seems like that would be the most obvious means of introducing so many bricks into our trench. All in all, it was a productive day at the FBC.

October 15, 2007

This week's fieldwork provided a fun and informative look into remote sensing technologies, with the ultimate goal of mapping and finding underground structures around the lawn of the Nightingale Brown House. However, the day started on a different note. While walking down Benefit st. towards the Nightingale Brown house, I heard a distinct "MARK!" shouted out the window of a passing car. Confused, I turned around to see kate leaning out her window, telling me to come with her to the FBC to open up some trenches. I hopped in, and within 10 or 15 minutes I was hard at work in Trench D1 alongside Stephanie. The digging was highly productive in this trench; we unearthed numerous glass shards, a few pieces of brick, and finally a piece of what appears to be animal bone. Upon seeing this bone, we stopped digging and cleaned around it carefully so that we could document it as a special find. We photographed it and measured the coordinates of all of its sides. I will be curious to clean it off and attempt to figure out what animal it may have come from.

After about an hour's work at the FBC, the small group with which I was digging was sent to the Nightingale Brown house, where we assisted in using a Magnetometor and a GEMII to remotely sense what is underground in the yard. Due to our team's small size, we were incredibly efficient in our work. Unfortunately, the batteries to both machines died. While we were unable to salvage the GEMII without many hours of charging, a 5 minute charge on the magnetometor rendered it operational for long enough to finish the job. The machines were very easy to operate; all it entailed was the ability to walk in a straight line. I look forward to seeing the data that results from our work--perhaps we'll find out that there are more archaeological projects to do right here on college hill!

October 20, 2007

Community dig day ended up being more an opportunity to put in some digging hours than the community outreach session we wished to have. Only one person showed up, the church historian. While the lack of interest in the community was slightly disappointing, the weather was also pretty bad, so perhaps that is what kept folks inside. In addition, there was a silver lining to the small numbers we had: it was considerably easier for the few of us who were there to make tangible progress in our trenches without being distracted by curious people and without having to share sifters and other resources. We didn't stay too long as the weather was poor, but all in all the community dig day was a nice opportunity to get out of bed early on a saturday and do something constructive.

October 22, 2007

Today I spent the day in trench C1 alongside Veronica, digging through a great deal of yellow-colored dirt without finding much. Notable artifacts included a large piece of glass and quite a bit of brick. More importantly, Vernonica and I learned firsthand the importance of careful documentation through a mishap involving our interpretation of last week's SU sheet. The sheet gave us the impression that last week's group had finished SU4 and that we should start SU5. SU4, however, was a natural layer, and upon digging for a while we realized that SU4 had not in fact been finished because the soil looked very different in some parts of the trench than others. To rectify this situation, we called everything we had dug part of SU4, and we started two new layers, SU5 and SU6, which will both be excavated separately because of their drastically different soil types. SU5 is very yellow, and its texture is that of sand and clay mixed. SU6, on the other hand, is brown, and the soil is quite chunky. Solving this problem gave us a taste of the logistical nightmare that a dig can become if everything is not meticulously documented. Imaging doing a 100 square foot excavation with a 5 million dollar grant and realizing halfway that, oops, someone messed up the SU sheets for the soil and now the artifacts that have been discovered cannot be traced to the layer of sedimentation in which they were found. Such mistakes can be costly and catastrophic for a dig; luckily,Veronica and I caught this early on and fixed our mistake quickly.

Mark
Field Team
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