Week 11:
This week we split up and began our final projects. Mine is on the glass fragments found at the First Baptist Church. We found so much glass, however, that I wasn’t able to finish collecting and organizing the pieces even with extra help! This coming Monday I hope to finally record all the data and start my analysis. Thus far, I have been recording the pieces by SU level and trench number. For each bag sample, I labeled the total number of pieces, the total weight, the glass color (number of fragments and curvature), and noted any “special” finds (ones that are embossed or have any other unusual features). Next session, I plan to take digital pictures and make drawings of a few noteworthy pieces (so stay tuned…). Depending on the nature of my finds, I will probably focus my research on the study of a particular type of glass either vessels or flat glass. I’m more inclined to study vessels because they have such a wide variety of functions. Hopefully, I’ll be able to identify some of them. Whatever happens it will be a fun investigation!
Week 10:
So this week we worked for the first time in the lab in Metcalf. While we mostly spent time cleaning the artifacts and putting them on drying racks, it was still pretty fun. It was fairly meticulous work, but it was nice to finally see the objects without dirt. Most of the objects I cleaned were brick, stones, glass, pottery, nails, and shell pieces. I particularly like some of the glass pieces - there were some rather brilliant blue fragments that were quite beautiful! For my final project, I will actually be examining the glass pieces we uncovered. Though I will probably start within the next two weeks on actually catagorizing these pieces, I look forward to the research.
Week 9:
Monday was our last day in the field! As chance would have it, it happened that I worked on the same trench I started with C2. First, we took final measurements of the trench and its depth. I drew the top plan and profile of the west wall. Luckily, the strata were fairly distinct which made it easier to draw them. This was pretty fun since I actually got to apply what we learned in section to real life practice. After taking a final picture of the site, I then went to help the other students backfill the trenches. Mostly I just did a lot of shoveling (I certainly got a pretty good week's worth of a workout). Backfilling was a strange experience in that all the hard, careful work was completely destroyed in one afternoon! It made me further realize the need to be really precise in recording information. Archaeology is essentially a destructive process, even though we are recovering information. This next week we will be working in the lab and I'll get to work on the glass pieces for my final project. I'm definitely looking forward to doing research on this!
Week 8:
We are beginning to come to a close to our dig, which is sad : (. It’s been so much fun! Nicole and I worked on C1 and dug quadrants 50 cm by 50 cm in each SU. Although we did not yet reach sterile soil since we uncovered some nails, shells, glass and brick, it seems that there is definitely less cultural material in the two SUs. The soil was particularly rocky on the north side, which was also the deeper side, and we also found evidence of charcoal in the center of the trench. I was hoping that we would uncover more material, but I guess this will be the end. Unfortunately, the weather has gotten really cold lately, making it difficult to dig for a long time. We definitely commiserated and had a brief sun bathing moment at the end of the day.
Next week, Kate said that Nicole and I will complete the dig by doing final measurements of the trench and draw top plans and take some soil samples. This should be interesting since we only got to practice on drawings in our section class. At the end of the day I was a little sad about not doing anymore excavation, but I have to admit that I wouldn’t really want to keep digging during a Providence snowstorm!
Week 7:
On Monday I worked on D4 with Stephanie. This test pit is located on the north side of the church centered between North Main Street and Benefit and is situated close to the road. Unlike the soils of C2 and D2 (the two pits I dug previously), the composition of D4 was very rocky from building material debris. All we did not find much pottery (one glazed piece), we unearthed lots of brick pieces, nails and glass fragments. This is probably to be expected since the pit is located right next to the road where there has undoubtedly been a lot of construction. I also learned during the Community Dig Day this past weekend that there have been a number of accidents on Thomas Street. Apparently, a car crashed through the church’s north wall one time!
When we started digging the pit was not very deep. There were two SU layers, one was SU5 which was a strip of charcoal on the northern edge of the pit and the other was SU6 which was the rest of the pit. We left SU5 and continued to dig SU6. By the end of the day we were a few centimeters less than 50 cm, however, we were not able to finish the SU by the time we cleaned up. The soil in this area was mixed, some parts were compact and grayish in color, other parts had patches of sand. Although the finds themselves did not reveal as much, I’d be interested to know more about the strip of charcoal which we left alone. I wonder was this once part of a hearth? Or garbage dumps? In this week’s reading we read an article about pedology which showed the importance of the science of soil for archaeology not only for dating and stratigraphy, but also for learning more about the learning more about the nature of the various soil layers through chemical analysis. I am not sure if we will be doing soil samples this season, but it would be interesting to study what we can tell just from such a small sample.
Week 5:
This week we changed our routine. Instead of digging at the First Baptist Church the whole time, half of us first went to the Nightengale Brown House on Benefit Street. Last week we had a guest lecturer speak to us about archaeological geophysics, which uses non-invasive techniques to learn more about the area possible excavated. The two methods we used were Electromagnetic Induction, which measures the electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility of the subsurface, and thermoramification, which measures the amount of heat the subsurface radiates. These two could be potentially helpful for finding clay pipelines and anything metallic. Both of the instruments were set at different frequencies so that many layers of the subsurface could be tested at the same time. During this process I first helped moving the tape measure along which the instruments followed. The increments were set at every half meter, I believe. At the end I got to use the Electromagnetic Induction instrument (they definitely don’t make these for small people). I had to be careful to walk at a moderate pace and not wobble the meter too much. I noticed that there was a lot of beeping as I walked in the front of the house. Perhaps the signal is picking up on drainpipes? I’d be curious to know what the charts look like once the information has been downloaded onto the computers.
For the second half of the class I went to the First Baptist Church, where I worked on different test pit, D2. Compared to C2 the soil was much more rocky and had a lot of yellow sandy looking soil. Cindy, Hannah (a prospective student) and I only worked at the site for about forty-five minutes so we didn’t uncover as much, but Cindy found a bone joint, which was exciting. Kate thought that it might be faunal since it was so small. I guess we’ll see in lab what it is! From the two sifts that we did, we uncovered for the most part mostly brick pieces, some shell pieces and rusted nails. Here a picture Kate of me holding some of the bricks…
After doing all the research for the CRM report, I’m curious to see if we’ll find any more colonial objects. I’m really hoping that we’ll get to find some more porcelain! Now that I’ve learned more in detail about the history of the site, I’m much more curious to see what we’ll turn up. It’s really quite amazing to think that hundreds of years of artifacts could be buried on this small plot of land.
Week 4:
This was my second day digging at the FBC. It was a bit cooler than last week and slightly overcast (though no rain). Fortunately, the ground was still fairly soft and easy to dig with the trowel. Earlier in the day, two other people had been working on C2, but there was an attack of yellow jackets. By the time I had arrived, the yellow jackets didn’t seem to mind us working there, and left us alone. This time round we (Scott, Mark and I) found a lot more artifacts. For the most part we uncovered some rusted nails, lots of red brick pieces and tons of glass fragments. Two of the most interesting finds were a piece of decorated porcelain and some kind of iron object, which we are still in the midst of unearthing.
The porcelain fragment, which Mark dug up in the south west corner of the trench, has white ground with a dark brown depiction of some outdoor scene (there appeared to be a representation of a house and some trees). Now I am really curious to know more about this fragment and keep asking myself “When is this from?” “Can we tell what it was used for?” and “Will we find more pieces?” I can’t wait to start working in the lab to examine this artifact more closely. Though we’ve read a little about some of the different pottery in Adkins and Adkins, I would like to learn more about how to identify a piece by its decoration style. One thing that I really enjoy about excavating is the detective work!
The rusted iron object, which we found in the northwest corner of the trench, is flat and curved. At first glance, I thought it might be a horseshoe, but upon closer examination I thought that it seemed a little too big to be one. I guess I will have to wait and see until next time what it is…
Of the other objects we uncovered in C2, I was also surprised at the amount of glass and brick present. Sometimes we would come across large chunks of glass – the colors ranged from a clear white, light blue, dark velvet green to a dark brown (almost black looking). Though it was difficult to tell what kind of bottle these fragments came from, perhaps when we look at them more closely in the lab we’ll be able to identify from the curvature and shape what century they are from. The bricks as well will hopefully reveal some clues too about the people who once passed through this site. Although the bricks themselves do not appear to be in any kind of formation, which would provide useful hints for dating them, it is possible that they may have been piled or thrown away when the roads were made of brick (Mark noticed that there are red bricks by the pavement near road to the west of the site (?). But these are just hypotheses…who knows what the story is here? I can’t wait to find out though!
September 24, 2007
Posted at Sep 30/2007 10:14AM:
Week 3:
Monday was my first day excavating at the First Baptist Church, which was co-founded by the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams. This was also my first time participating in an archaeological excavation - I was so excited! Although I thought that we would uncover very little after digging only 10 cm down, I was pleasantly surprised to discover with Nicole some pieces of porcelain, glaze-ware and a pearly, white button on my first day. I am particularly curious about the piece of blue and white porcelain (a sherd approximately half a centimeter across), which had an intricate vegetal / floral design on it. I wonder what the rest of this artifact looked like? And if we found more sherds, could we trace this kind of pottery to a certain import from China? Hopefully, we'll uncover more pieces this next round.
The site which Nicole and I worked on was called C2, located on a hill, on the northeast of the church. Since I joined the class in the second week, most of the initial trench work had alreadly been completed. On Monday we dug 10 cm more and started on the next level. The site itself is supposed to contain colonial and Native American remains (alledgedly, a path ran close to the church). So far, most of the remains look colonial or more recent. I would be excited to discover something from the Native Americans (knock on wood...).
All in all, there's something so rewarding and remarkable in unearthing an object from the past that once was touched, used, discarded, and lost. I can't wait to see what we discover next!
