Class Journals 2007 - Maddy| Archaeology of College Hill 2007

September 17, 2007

Imagine my embarassment when, reading for the first time about archeological methods in Hester's "Field Methods in Archaeology," I learned that my amateur digging this summer at a site nearby my home could actually be pernicious, rather than just a benign diversion. I had never realized that the method of excavation was responsible for most of the information that an archaeologist has about an artifact, and that careless removal essentially nullifies any significance that the "find" could have. Although I am comforted by the probable lack of historical importance that my summer site had, I am chagrinned by my unlearned, "pothunting" approach and the impediment it may have been to future exploration of the site. Even in my first day in the field at the First Baptist Church, I saw the importance of recording the level, position and other facts about the context of an artifact, rather than just pulling an interesting item out of the ground. Although Holtorf in his "Notes on the Life History of a Pot Sherd" is rather scathing about even the most professional approaches to archeology, our methods at the First Baptist Church seem quite thorough. Of course it is up to the quick judgment of each student to deem an item interesting or uninteresting, as Holtorf says, but the major difference between that and "pothunting" seems to be the definition of what is interesting. While this summer I was essentially looking for complete, unique and easily identifiable objects, at the FBC I consider interesting anything that can tell me about the history of this area, be it shiny or otherwise. In short, fieldwork so far has been very informative as to the methods of archeology that are helpful and didactic, even better than a benign pastime.

September 24, 2007

Monday was my second day digging, and it was a rough one at that. Positioned at trench D2, I and my partner were faced with a veritable dustbowl, accentuated by the wind and direct sun on us. To my surprise somewhat, we both ended up wearing safety masks. I, in fact, had dimissively left mine at home, and had to use an extra one to keep from coughing. Besides concerns of comfort, we were digging around a large root that cleaves the trench, and we dug through some fifteen centimeters to find only a sherd of pottery and an dime-sized shred of fabric. I was glad to find both items, and, although I still do not know of their archaeological importance, they were very pleasing to my eye after cubic feet of dust. Concluding the dig that day, I narrated to myself, "Archaeology... it has its up and it has its downs!" This "gap" in the record of this trench only whets my appetite for the even older things that I might find further down. Additionally, I enjoy digging for the variety it produces in my otherwse clean, sedentary and theoretical lifestyle. Being in the position to, potentially, make discoveries for myself, rather than reading about them, gives a different perspective to my intellectual life in ways that I have not yet fully appreciated.

October 1, 2007

This week was so exciting at Trench D2! I will almost be sad to have to rotate to another trench, because in the past two weeks digging there I have seen our excavation go from a sparse pile of grey dirt to a somewhat cohesive archaeological scene. This week we dug into two new SU's and found several distinct types of soil, and a consistent array of artifacts that suggest to me that the site could actually be interpreted as something. Whereas before we dug through several SU's to find only the occasional shard of glass, this week we found several oyster shells (a possible complement to the deer skeleton found nearby last year, who knows?) and large rocks in what might be some sort of deliberate formation. The soil was also clearly heterogeneous, with ochre, very dark brown and grey portions intermingling. Although I do not want to jump to conclusions greater than the evidence can actually support, my curiosity was ignited by this semblance of order in what was previously a jumbled and random-seeming dig. To paraphrase Samuel Coleridge, beauty is similitude within dissimilitude. So, it was a sight for bored eyes when we percieved two reasonably distinct types of soil, divided by a portion of rocks. Perhaps I never thought that I would find something like this so exciting.

October 15, 2007

This week we only dug briefly, because for most of the afternoon we were at the Nigthingale Brown House doing magnetic tests. The tests were very interesting, especially when I got to walk the lines and listen to the beeps indicating what was underneath the earth (and hopefully not just indicating the presence of cars on the street). When we finally got the the FBC, however, I opened trench D4 and began digging again. Although I see the importance of rotating trenches and trying out new conditions of digging, I really enjoy digging the same trench week after week, because I get to see for myself how it changes and the new items it brings forth. I have so far worked twice at D2 and twice at D4, and found it extremely satisfying to see the work progress for longer periods. This week the trench was muddy from last week's rain, but it had gotten a lot more interesting since when I had dug it on Week 1. We suspect that it contains refuse from the renovation of the church some decades ago, characterized by charcoal, nails (both rusted and unrusted) and hunks of what is probably asphalt. The most interesting feature, however, is the vertical interface between two stratigraphic units, one of sandy soil and one of mostly charcoal and dirt, which forms an extremely straight and distinct line. Although it perhaps is no great mystery how that feature arose, it is still interesting to look at and dig around.

October 22, 2007

I am disappointed that we are ending our dig so soon. It is highly unlikely that any of the trenches will reach the point required by American Archaeological standards, of two consecutive empty stratigraphic units, before we backfill them. This is of course the nature of the undergraduate semester system, in conjunction with the New England climate. It was just getting good! For all my enthusiasm, Whit and I dug this past week in trench C2, also known as the most boring trench Ever. Each SU yielded approximately 5 artifacts, none of which bore any particular relation to any other. Despite this, I think that beginning an excavation should ideally entail pursuing it until there is really nothing left, whether bedrock or just pure dirt. The reality is, of course, that the First Baptist Church is a site of moderate archaeological relevance, and that a full-fledged, no-holds-barred excavation is really not necessary. As such, I am looking forward to the next one and 1/2 days in the field, and especially to the subsequent laboratory analysis of our finds.

October 29, 2007

This week's dig was a session of real quick 'n' dirty archaeology, it being the last digging day and one of the first really cold days of the semester. We quartered the trench that I had worked in last time, C2, and two of us dug in two quadrants. Although I excavated close to 20 cm in that session, it was not quite enough to declare it an officially empty site: there were still a few cultural inclusions per layer, enough to keep it in the running according to official archaeological guidelines. However, following our schedule, we will close the trench in the week to come and then begin to analyze our finds, leaving any unexcavated items in the ground in perpetuity. Unlike the other trenches that I have worked in, being D2 and D4, this trench did not immediately tell me any sort of story. The story of course should some out in the laboratory, and I am just too hasty in judging the entire trench based upon a few layers in which I saw neither a great contrast nor an overwhelming unity of soil or of inclusions. There is no saying what we will find out once we begin to interact with the material more than just putting it in plastic bags and labelling it. First of all, though, I am sure excited to backfill the trenches!

November 5, 2007

This week, our last on the dig, I spent much of the time creating plans of trench D4, a rather tricky trench. Especially as the sun went down, starting around 3:30 pm, it was exceedingly difficult to tell what were different layers and what were just shadows. This seems to be a constant trend in archaeology, whereby the ambient circumstances intrude into the investigation to the point of total uncertainty. There were sections that were too faint and too vague to measure precisely- more like smudges that had a faintly perceptible trend line. And there were rocks protruding slightly from the baulks, maybe enough to count but maybe not. The different soil types seemed more like different admixtures of the same soil elements, faintly distinguished from each other. But in the waning November light we did our best on two vertical views and a top plan. I enjoyed the process of creating the plan on graph paper, as a way of attempting to plot chaos onto order, but the outcome, especially for the top plan, was a little bit disappointing. There seemed to be no way within the plan parameters to express what the trench really looked like from above: It was not jsut a bunch of protruding rocks and points, but a precipitously sloping wall with many concave areas concealed from the "Bird's Eye View" that I was supposed to have of the trench. At any rate, it was a useful concluding activity, both for posterity, and to sum up the progress since I had last dug on that trench. Once we had finished our plans, the soil sampling crew came in to take tests, and than we all set to backfilling. It was an arduous and conflicting job for me, burying what was not yet completely finished. What is more is that I felt very strange burying those tarps in the trenches. It is a shame that pollution is the only way for us to mark our territory in this business. It does not seem to me that archaeology is above concerns about the environment, since we are seeing the effects of a thoughtless approach to living in a space, in everything that we dig up, especially from the Industrial and Post-Industrial eras. It is a shame to use the same tactics to mark the sites for posterity, except that this is even deliberate.

Maddy
Field Team
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