Journals 10/29/07

Week 6 at the FBC

I was sick and could not make it to the dig today.

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.

Dan

I was back working in trench D4 this week. This was our last week of actual digging and it was really cold. I leveled off an SU which was originally identified as an area of black soil. The layer of black soil was actually quite thin and receded into the back wall as I dug through it. There were less artifacts present in this SU than I had found in earlier SU's in D4. After the trench had been leveled off, I measured and divided the trench into quarters and excavated the southwest corner (the idea was to dig as deep as possible in this quarter before the end of the day and the end of excavations in the trench). The soil in the southwest quarter quickly became sand as I dug. The quarter also contained a very large number of rocks ranging in size from small to large, but the quarter contained almost no artifacts. Hopefully this means that we dug as deep as was necessary to obtain artifacts from the trench

Stephanie

Well, this was the last day of full digging at the First Baptist Church. I have to admit, I'm kind of sad that we are almost done. It feels like we just started! However, I know it's for the best since this week it was already starting to get pretty cold. I'm not sure how well I could handle digging in the trenches during the beginning of winter!

This week I started out in trench D4 on my own, a particularly rocky trench. I worked on cleaning the eastern wall of the trench, which was not as vertical and straight as it needed to be. Not much was discovered during this wall clean, only some bits of glass, metal, and brick. It was pretty chilly, especially in the shade, so I had work gloves and hood on. Kate said that with my sunglasses on, I looked like the unabomber! It was pretty funny.

After my 2 pm class, I worked with Maddy in trench C2. While I had been gone, the decision had been made to start quartering the trenches into 50cm by 50cm squares in order to get down as deep as possible for the rest of the day. I dug the northeast quadrant of the trench, while Maddy dug the southwest one. The trench was getting so deep, I found it easiest to lay on my stomach and dig that way. Needless to say, I got pretty dirty! Besides a lot of worms, I mainly found pieces of brick and metal. No revolutionary discoveries this time! Not wearing gloves and laying on the cool ground left me pretty frozen by the time class was over. Believe me, I am definitely bringing gloves next time! It seemed to me like in this trench, we may have been starting to reach sterile soil, but I couldnt be sure. I am curious as to whether we could have found more interesting artifacts if we had kept digging deeper.

Next class, we will be taking soil samples, drawing plans, and backfilling the trenches. It is amazing to consider how quickly several weeks' worth of digging can be undone within a few seconds of backfilling! I must admit, I am slightly dreading the potential hard labor that lugging around backfill soil will entail! Hopefully it won't be too bad. I am more looking forward to getting into the lab and studying everything that has been found. I feel as though there are several discoveries from many of the trenches that I do not know anything about yet. I can understand the feeling archaeologists must get when they are carrying out excavations; I am sure many of them must find it quite fascinating to get into the lab and start studying the artifacts that they have worked so hard to find. I am certainly eager to experience that aspect of archaeology now. I have studied artifacts in a lab before, but never artifacts that I myself have dug up.

Well, that's all for now. All I can say is, I hope tomorrow isn't too cold!!

Tyler

Had I not been so enthralled in my reflections on this last day of digging at the site before soil sampling and restoration of the churchyard, I may have been more concerned about how ridiculous I must have looked to the staring passers-by, my right leg extended outward to balance my precarious, low, hunching position as I reached deep into the southeast quadrant of the D3 trench to remove the last of the soil 75 cm below the surface; from a distance, my left ear hovering an inch above the void and my body slightly teetering with each plunge of my arm into the past below and beyond (all accompanied by my stoic, concentrated demeanor), I am sure I appeared deeply engaged in some sort of yoga-inspired, ground-worshiping meditation. Yes, I physically almost had my head in the sand, but my mind was in the clouds, collecting my thoughts about my archaeology experience thus far.

It is true that much of our reality is made of physical, tangible entities - that is, we are surrounded and we surround ourselves with a physical environment in which we can better position ourselves to to achieve our passions, our fancies - and these physical entities and relationships are the focus of the archaeologist's investigation. We build a fence to show who owns what and to contain our herds, we use a fork and knife to avoid what we in American culture see as the barbarousness of eating in polite company with our hands. We pull the pipe-stem from the earth, part of a former reality, and ask, "what was the physical world like for these past people, and how does that reflect their thoughts.

But the way I see it, this is somewhat of an indirect route to understanding the mindset of the past. History - in studying documents, artifacts of words that allow the mindset of the past to transcend time and be easily recognizable to the reader - seems to be direct study of these ideas that I think are the objective of anyone who studies the past. The historian can delve into the mind of Jefferson because they read of the "inalienable right in which he believed enough to "sever the bonds" between two peoples, but the archaeologists seem to me struggling to come up with the Declaration by examining the pen Jefferson used to write it! Of course this is not to say that archaeologists are illiterate or avoid documents, but their focus seems to be on only those ideas that are accepted enough in a society to be shared amongst the members of the community and thus reflected in their public, physical environment.

Indeed, how much of our dreams and mind - that which make us human - remain unsaid, never to be reflected in our environment because of cultural restrictions on their expression? Archaeologists are concerned about bias in the research technique, bias in the field worker's conception of what is an "artifact", bias everywhere!, but why do they not consider the bias that may impair their investigation stemming from a lack of physical expression of one's dreams due to the values of the culture of which they are a part. I may be harboring an intense infatuation with Cheetos that my habitual vegetable munching and apple crunching belies; my culture admonishes me to eat healthly, so I am a health nut, and the archaeologist picking at my bones (imagine!) would perhaps perceive that chemically, but my true love of Cheetos would be lost, never to be known again (the tragedy!). To use an earlier analogy, archaeologists who find my fork and knife would never know that I would much rather shovel the whole piece of pie into my mouth in one swoop with my hands (and I know there are others out there that feel the same way!

My earlier entries seem to ask the question, "Are these incorporeal and unexpressed mindsets accessible to the archaeologist - can we truly hope to understand people from what they leave behind? Is it the individuals we are studying in archaeology or the societies that in many ways constrain the individual and prevent the individual's mind from truly being expressed? Archaeologists can map the world all they want, but it is left to the historians and their documents, it seems, to map the world beyond, to map the mind!

But perhaps the language and words that historians study, too, are no more than a tool created for the benefit of a society and are not conducive to expressing the individual. As fun a word as it is, Mary Poppin's neologism still doesn't quite As I listen to the organic music of Debussy and Copland and I see how it truly speaks to me, perhaps more than words, across time, I can't help but feel puzzled by man and his relationship to the culture that claims him.

That is a question all students of the past must ask themselves: Am I trying to understand the individual, or the collective culture that bends the individual?

But, maybe after all this musing (and so much I have to leave unsaid!), perhaps the ideas and the artifacts support one another and reinforce one another's meaning... Indeed, as my groping hand falls on single corroded nail 70 cm down in this shadowy, shady window we have created into the past, I think of the society that used it, and the man who cast it aside. But who was he?

Anyway, I am off now to secretly binge on Cheetos and pie,

Tyler

Maia

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!

Maddy

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!

Whit

Today I got to return to my favorite trench: D1! I hope everyone had a chance to dig here some time this semester. We seem to find something interesting every couple seconds. However, that was not the case today. Chelsea and I found almost nothing, at least compared to some of the amazing finds that have taken place in this trench earlier. Digging in this trench was also extremely uncomfortable. Again, D1 is located on a slope, so I worked on the deeper south side of the test pit. The blood was rushing to my head -- I became dizzy whenever I got up to sift the dirt. Eventually, we decided to quarter the trench, in a last attempt to get deeper and find something exciting! I feel terrible saying that -- I sound like a treasure hunter or something. I remember how excited I was to find the first metal nail in this same trench about a month ago, and now I'm annoyed whenever I find one. I guess I'm tired of digging, even though I've had a great time.

Chelsea and I continued digging our corners, bumping into each other the way a righty and a lefty do when they eat at the same table (Chelsea's words!). I'm actually glad that today was our last day of digging. Again, I had so much fun, but I can't wait to get into the lab and start analyzing these objects. It's starting to get cold too, so I'll be happy to be indoors.

Chelsea

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.

Cindy

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