Class Journals 2007 - Chelsea | Archaeology of College Hill 2007

September 17, 2007

Monday was our first day at the FBC. Because I registered for the course late I really had no clue where that was or what we were doing. I have myself some extra time to find the church and ended up waiting around for 20 minutes for everyone else to get there. It was nice though. I sat in the grass and listened to music and did the Brown Daily Heral Crossword Puzzle. For some reason I only knew the answers to the 'across' half.

When the rest of the class got to the site we started to set up our trenches. Whit and I ended up with D1 which happened to be on a hill. It made it a little more difficult to get our measurements right and the digging was slower, but it also made it more interesting. Instead of having one flat and boring arbitrary SU (stratographic unit) we ended up digging into only the southern (uphill) half of the trench for our first SU. For SU 2 we'll be going down vertically but also out and to the North. Setting up the trench was a bit of an ordeal. Two of our corners were very warped wooden stakes and it was hard to get our angles and lengths right. And our little balancing bubble level thing kept falling off of our string. But thanks to our amazing measuring, compassing and multi-tasking skills we finally got it all set up.

We found a lot of artifacts in D1, mainly pieces of glass and metal with a couple of shells and some plastic mixed in. The coolest thing we found was a little rusty metal clasp to something. And I found some seeds/beans which looked like lentils.

I enjoyed chatting with Whit during the dig and it was nice to be out in the sun and playing in the dirt.

September 24, 2007

Dates are good. I really should remember to use dates. Yesterday was our second day at FBC and I stayed at Trench D1 for the entire 4 and a half hours. As much as I'm fond of that trench, sitting on the hill for that long tends to make my back hurt a lot. Yesterday I finished SU2 and started SU3. Whit was with me for the first half of the time and then he got switched to another trench. Digging by yourself is not quite as entertaining as having a partner, but it does give you some introspection and daydreaming time. Yesterday was a pretty good day for finds. We found the usual million and a half pieces of broken glass and corroded metal but we also found a piece of stonewear, what looks like a piece of tile and most excitingly (to me anyways) was the piece of pipe bowl I found in SU3. Kate and Michelle said that if we found the pipe stem we'd be able to date the pipe, but it was towards the end of the class and there wasn't really time to dig into SU3 more. It was clean-up time. I'm starting to get a handle on all the paperwork that needs filling out and that's a nice feeling. So far the weather for our digs has been incredibly beautiful but I don't like to think how it will feel towards the ends of october.

October 1st, 2007

The third week was a bit of a different experience than the first two. I switched out of Trench D1 and into another trench up on the hill (I don't even remember the name off the top of my head - I've become that emotionally commited to d1 :-p). That trench was a little less full of artifacts but we did find a pipe stem (which, ironically, was what I had been hoping to find in D1). Artifacts seem to just follow me around I guess. It's like I'm a magnet and things migrate under the earth to go to whatever trench I'm in. Veronica and I also found some pieces of a plate or bowl in the trench on the hill but we gave that trench up pretty quickly anyways to avoid a lovely bunch of yellow jackets.

I then switched to another trench at the front of the church (which the name of also does not rise readily to mind) and worked with Tyler. This trench had some interesting features that we speculated may be old rotted wooden posts. However, they were positioned strangely for wooden posts and also present were little white rocks, so we aren't really sure what they are.

All of the trenchs are starting to look a little more impressive and less like dirty spots where someone scraped the grass off and that's nice. A lot of people from around the Church have come to talk to us. I guess they're church patrons mixed with just city walkers. Everyone is very friendly and seems generally interested in what we are doing and why. However, almost everyone inevitably ends up asking us "what are you looking for?" and I never quite know what to say to that. Somehow "artifacts" seems lacking as an answer, but we can't truthfully answer something glorious like buried ancient civilazations or pirate gold either.

October 15th, 2007

The more time passes, the more this class falls into place for me. Originally I was sort of lost, but as I begin to place our Archaeology class in the historical context of Providence, Rhode Island the more interesting it all gets. Monday I went out to the the Nightingale Brown House but I ended up going back to my room and falling asleep because I was sick. I thought I'd be fine, but when I got to the house it was breezy and chilly and too bright and everyones voices sounded like the Charley Brown teacher so I gave up on trying to be present. But Wednesday we had a really interesting section where Jason Urbanis (a really cool graduate student) came to talk to us. He gave us a very brief overview of the history of Rhode Island and Providence and it was absolutely fascinating. The part that struck me most was seeing maps of Roger Williams original settlement (basicaly right next to the FBC). The maps had the plots of land labeled by the men who had owned them and now almost all those strips are the names of the streets on College Hill. They also had Native American trade and travel routes which also all seemed to go right by the FBC. Since Rhode Island is so small, I feel like it's easier to quickly grab a basic understanding of the historical structure. Since North Carolina (where I'm from) is so big, it's almost like there are 3 histories to be grabbed, the coast, the piedmont, and the mountains. For some reason learning the historical background of the literal land I'm standing on really struck me as awesome today. I could look at old maps and see the street corners they showed and picture the buildings that are on those spots now. It's fun to imagine what Providence must have looked like in Roger Williams time.

I'm sad I missed class this past Monday and more than a bit aprehensive about our midterm project that's due day after tomorrow (which due to 3 other midterm papers I didn't get a chance to start as early as would probably have been good), but overall I am super grateful to be in the Archaeology of College Hill.

October 22nd, 2007

This week I spent once again in D1. I like that trench for a number of reasons. For one, we actually find things there, but also the angle of the land makes digging more interesting/comfortable. Or maybe I'm just emotionally attached to the silly trench. This week I dug with Tyler and we found a pipe stem as well as something that looked like some sort of animal bone but no one was really sure. The rest of the artifacts were normal for D1 (glass, metal etc). It was a beautiful day for digging and I ended up not getting as antsy as I usually do. Four and half hours actually passed relatively quickly this week. One exciting thing that happened this week in D1 was the transition from arbitrary SUs to natural ones. We ended up reached SU7 and SU8 which are horizontally on the same level but different soil types. We didn't get very far into delineating the differences between the two SUs before the day was over however.

October 29th, 2007

I came ridiculously close to forgetting to post this particular journal entry. On the 29th I dug (once again) in Trench D1 with Whit. It was our last day of digging, and this last week of fieldwork will be dedicated to drawing top plans and backfilling all our hard work. Towards the end of our digging time in D1 we started digging SUs in quarters instead of whole meter squares. However, it was at about this point that D1 turned into nothing but really hard to dig around and out rocks. And it was so deep that there was no good angle from which to dig. It was also very cold and I was all bundled up i n multiple sweatshirts and a hat that kept falling down over my eyes. The whole time my hands were absolutely freezing even though I was wearing gloves for the majority of the time. The one cool thing we found on the last excavation was a piece of a turtle shell. I thought it was really pretty. I'm exciting about being finished digging. As cool as it was, the trences were getting way too deep for digging to be easy or even feasible and it was all getting sort of routine for me. Not to mention the fact that it will be nice to be inside when it gets all cold. I'm excited about drawing the top plan (I like graph paper) but not as excited about hauling too heavy buckets of dirt to fill in old trenches.

Novemeber 5th, 2007

This Monday was our LAST DAY at the FBC. I spent the first two hours or so drawing top plans and sections plans for Trench D1 and D3 (I think? I can never remember the names of any of the trenches other than D1), and the remaining two and half hours shoveling tons of dirt and hauling way too heavy buckets and stomping around in half-filled trenches. One of the things about back-filling the trenches that felt very strange to me (and too many of my classmates as well) was the practices of putting the tarps we'd been using to cover the trenches in the bottoms of the trenches before we began to fill them with dirt. I understand the concept of leaving mark that they were archaelogical sites, but it still strikes me as very weird and kind of wrong to be burying large sheets of plastic in the ground. It feels almost irreverent, as if we're using the front yard fo the First Baptist Church to begin a landfill. Another thing in relation to the tarps that I found pretty hilarious was Doug's insistence on taking a permanent marker and writing "Doug was here" on the tarp before he threw it in the trench. For some reason it struck me as very funny way of expressing your desire for an affirmation of your own existence....by writing on a tarp that you do indeed exist and burying it in the ground where chances are no one will ever dig it up again.

Backfilling the trenches was a LOT of work and I'm really glad that we had the entire class there to work on it otherwise I think I would have burned out pretty early on. I wish I was stronger and could carry big buckets of dirt without wincing, but just because I wish it doesn't mean I'm actually that good at it. One thing I think would be really helpful if this class continues on in years to come would be to create seperate dirt piles by every trench. It seems to me that it would be so much easier to go and grab the sifter and carry it to your trench 2-3 times in an afternoon then it was to fill ALL the dirt from ALL the trenchs back into the holes from three piles. I personally would be willing to do the little bit of extra work as the course progressed rather than the HUGE-O-MOUNGAS task of back-filling at the end. I'm making a big deal out of it, it really wasn't all that bad, but it would make more sense to have piles right next to the holes.

Oh yeah, and it was dark when we got out of class and I almost got lost and kidnapped and abducted by aliens during my lonely walk back to my little ol' freshman dorm. The end of todays entry comes now: The End!

November 12th, 2007

This week was the first week in the lab (although I think maybe we only have 2 or 3 weeks in the lab left, how strange). We spent the entire 2.5 hours washing our artifacts and we finished washing EVERTHING from the whole dig. It was neat to see some of the things that came from trenches I didn't dig in and also to reencounter some of my favorite artifacts from the trenchs I did dig in. I had a really good time chatting with Nicole and it was nice to be inside in a warm, lighted room instead of hauling bucks in the cold and dark. The closer we get to the end of the semester the more I realize I'm not really cut out for this course. My final is on ceramics and it's hanging over my head in a ridiculously forboding way and I plan to get started on it over Thanksgiving Break but it just seems so large and intimidating when paired with the fact that I have another 12 page research paper/project due in another class at about the same time as this one. I am not a fan of this sort of research.

Hmmm.

November 19th, 2007

The second week of lab we basically spent going through all the trays and collecting our artifacts. In my case it was ceramics and it basically took up the entire 2.5 hours just to label all the bags and sort all the ceramics. And I didn't even have time to start waying the pieces or taking/drawing pictures. It was sort of ridiculous. Now the lab will be open a good bit of this week. I'd like to get most of my stuff done in class today, but I have a feeling there will be a long line at the scales. Thankfully I have my own digital camera so I can start working on taking pictures and drawing. I'm also thinking about taking my computer (although keeping it far away from dusty gritty artifacts) so that I can use some of the books in their as resources. I really want to look at last years report in hard copy. I have it downloaded to my computer but it's always easier to look at books. I also want to take advantage of some of the other resources in the lab.

Chelsea
Field Team
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