Class Journals 2007 - Veronica | Archaeology of College Hill 2007

September 17, 2007

Today was the first day of excavating on the field of the First Baptist Church for our class and it was exciting working with my team. We excavated in an area where last year's class found an animal skeleton. I'm hoping that we find something similar, just as exciting or more. Today, we found huge chunks of broken glass and we are so determined to connect it to something amazing. We also found what COULD be a piece of bone (or just a piece of shell) but regardless of what it is, I just want to find more. It was interesting to find a monsterous root in our way of digging, but hey....it got there before we did fair and square as did the multiple grubs that we encountered, but we just flicked them away. Tune into next time when we dig 10 centimeters deeper......

October 1st, 2007

Today, I worked in two different trenches from my last episode at the First Baptist Church. The first trench (C2) that I worked in, I worked with Chelsea and we found quite a bit of objects. We found a lot of coal and glass and also *GASP* discovered a small piece of a pipe stem. That was very exciting to find. We also discovered small pieces of what looks like a broken plate. We had hoped to find more, but we were scared away by the army of yellow jackets and had to be moved after on ly working in the trench for very small portion of time. *SIGH* oh well.....

The trench that I was moved to was right next to the road of the church: trench C1. I was placed with Whit and Stephanie and this trench was a bit interesting as well. We found so many small pieces of objects that we became experts in knowing what they were at first site after sifting the dirt through. THere was A LOT of brick, glass, coal, and metal fragments. We had found three nails and discovered an exciting piece of ceramic with floral design on it. In some of the sifting, we found what is believed by us to be some sort of volcanic rock because itis black and very light. It could very well be tar, but we won't really know until we get to the lab in a few weeks.....HORRAY!!!!

October 16th, 2007

Today, I only worked in the field in tranch D2 for a short period of time, but Scott and I still found a few small objects. We found pieces of brick, glass, and more metal (a large warped nail). This is in the same area that the skelton was found in last year so I feel that if we dig a bit deeper, we mght find something else along those lines. The reason that so little time was devoted to digging at FBC was because the class is leaning to use a magnetometer at the Nightengale Brown House for future excavation. Perhaps in the future, we can use it at the FBC.

October 22, 2007

Today I worked in trench C1 again which hadn't been touched by anyone since the last time that Whit, Stephanie, and myself worked in it (see above). This trench seems to be filled with more pieces of brick than any other trench that I've worked at so perhaps that calls for some interretation once we get into the lab. We also found huge pieces of glass in one layer that we dug in. Then we continued another layer but did not find much. Since this trench is right next to the FBC building, I'm hypothesizing that most of the artifacts deep in the ground in this area is a result of construction on the building, but that, too can be investigated later.

October 29, 2007

Today, I dug in trench D2. We were extremely deep (almost 100 centimeters) this time, but to my disappointment, we didnt find anything in the two levels that we had dug in this round. The trench only consisted of rocks and dirt which made it difficult to sift through. Nevertheless, we closed the trench finally and Cindy (my partner) helped other people with their trenches and cleaned up. By next week, we will fill the trenches back up with the dirt that we removed and the following week, we will finally be in the lab to interpret the artifacts and objects that we recovered.

November 5, 2007

Today was the last day of our excavation adventures at the First Baptist Church. We took profiles of the trenches and closed them by back filling them with the dirt that we removed which was quite possibly the most difficult part of the entire excavation for me, but everyone got a great workout today!

We're finished......It was kind of sad. We moved so quickly. I feel as though we could have dug further. For some people this was a first time excavation so people we excited to have that experience now. We're not through yet htough. We still have the artifacts to clean in the lab which is what I am most excited about because that is one part of archaeology that I do not have as experience.

November 21, 2007

This week, each individual in the project began to work on his/her portion of the final report of our excavation. It will all be put together nicely so that people can reference what we have done. I, myself, am working on the stratigraphic aspect of our excavation for each trench. By studying the soil samples and the layers of each trench, interpretations of the artifacts can be more accurate. Some might say that I'm just looking at dirt, but it is more of a science than other may believe. This process takes a while and even in two hours, I wa snot able to finish what I had started (looking at the soil samples). Soon, I'll computerize the layers with Michelle so that there is a better picture of the layers of each trench.

Veronica
Field Team
Home