Journals 10/20/07

Mark

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.

Stephanie

Week 4: October 20, 2007

Saturday was Community Dig Day at the First Baptist Church so that members of the church could come help us excavate and see what we were all about. I was placed in trench D2 with Scott, working to make SU 7 level with SU 6. Scott and I each found a cluster of pottery sherds in SU 7! The pottery looked like some kind of of pearlware or creamware, but I couldn't be sure. Most of the broken pieces were pretty small, smaller than a thumbnail. Scott and I wondered if both clusters could actually have been part of the same vessel or dish. Hopefully in the lab where we can all put our brains together, maybe we can figure out what these pottery sherds once constructed!

I enjoyed having visitors at the excavation who seemed really interested in what we were doing. It gave me a different perspective on our excavations, a different view than the one I usually have in a class-mindset. Since not too many people showed up, we only dug for about an hour and a half. However, it was a nice start to my Saturday!

Scott

Today was "Community Dig Day," an arrangement with the Church so that interested members can come out and see what we're doing, and if they're interested they're free to actually help with the excavation work. Kate put Stephanie and me at Trench D2, where we worked at leveling out SU7 and 6. Although we didn't work for quite as long as we do on Mondays, we came across a full share of objects.

Stephanie and I both found a "pottery cluster" in SU7, her's in the north half, mine in the south section. These consisted of a bunch of broken ceramic pieces all bunched together. The cluster I excavated - after taking measurements of its N-S, E-W and depth coordinates - consisted of more than 30 pieces of a thin white pottery, ranging in size from a dried pepper flake, to as big as my thumb. The really fascinating thing about the cluster was that the pieces were all piled on top of each other in an extended shape like a finger, not in a round clump. It will be really interesting once we get back in the lab to see what we can make of these finds. Maybe we can even re-construct the shape of the original object.

Whit

Posted 21 October 2007: Today was the optional digging/meet with members of the congregation. I stayed for a little more than an hour, and during that time, I got to return to my favorite trench: D1! I had forgotten what it was like finding 10 glass shards and 5 nails every minute. I was able to chat with a few members of the congregation. I really enjoyed talking to and screening dirt with the historian. He was really interested in what we were finding. No amazing finds today, but I'm sure when I get back to digging on Monday, many more interesting artifacts will be unearthed!

Doug

10/20/07

Having only narrowly avoided drowning the day before, I arrived at the FBC’s “Community Dig Day” fully expecting to find an ark run aground mid-slope on College Hill. After a weak attempt to convince Kate that the flood ate my paper, I was sent to wallow in the glorious mud of trench C2. To both my surprise and relief, the blue tarps had dammed out the torrent fairly effectively, and the cubit by cubit sized pit had not been completely inundated by the monsoon. That being said, however, the ground was a far cry from dry.

Given the previous day’s frog-pleasing conditions, the local community’s sparse attendance was understandable; presumably the myriad of curious spectators had either not yet returned from seeking higher ground, or had been moistly smitten by a wrathful God. There were, however, a few intrepid Deucalions populating the day’s event; one such Gilgamesh was the FBC’s historian, who regaled us with epic tales of recent church history. As we applied trowel to New England Ararat, he informed us that the crumbling stone wall on the east side of the property, parts of which date to the late eighteenth century, has been falling down since 2005 on account of traffic’s hitting the curb. I was surprised to hear how many potentially serious accidents there have been on site, even including a car which found a vertical parallel parking spot in the fifteen foot abyss at northeast corner of the building. Remarkably, with all these collisions, there has been only one fatality- that of a woman who fell over the wall having lost control of her horse.

In addition to easily-anticipated finds like glass, nails, and drowned earthworms, we extracted a curved iron object that had been half exposed the previous Monday. There was much debate as to its identification; initially it was suggested that it might be a gardening implement… given, however, the aforementioned steeplechase, I proposed it was a broken horseshoe. All things considered, “Community Dig Day’s” damp ground was worth its weight in extra credit. At least it wasn’t held in the pouring rains of the preceding day.