Andrew Seiden - Andrew's Field Blog

september 14

Today was our first meeting, and I had not expected to get into the field and start the process of digging right away. I was pleasantly surprised to find that after going over some course logistics, we would be making our way over to the John Brown House site to begin setting up our digs. This was great because of the seasonal constraints we will eventually be faced with, come late october and november. We were introduced to the various tools and their proper use and storage, and then kind of jumped right in with the help of the TAs. My group was assigned Unit 8, a 2x2 m square on the northeast side of the yard, between the house and the terrace, where there rest potentially the remains of outhouses used for laundry, horses, etc. This particular area has not been scanned with the geophysics equipment, so there is no telling what exactly we are looking for. Hence, the larger size of the unit. Today was mostly an introductory experience, as there were only a few in the group who had worked on any sort of archeological dig before. Our unit was used as an example for multiple groups, and we worked on setting up the basics, like putting out the string and taking down the initial measurements of height below the highest point of ground, since we are located on a hillside. We will start clearing the ground, and removing the first dirt next session.

september 21

The class's second meeting. We did a tour of the grounds to warm legs and minds, hearing from each group/unit what they had completed last week. The units out in the yard had for the most part simply removed the backfill from previous excavations, whereas our unit (#8), was a fresher spot with no previous digging done, so we were pretty much a little bit ahead of the curve. Though it is important to note that our unit covers the largest area, so it will probably end up taking the same amount of time. Anyway after that, we split up, and took stock of the situation: laid out the tarp on which we would sift through our dirt, got our tools ready, and then began to clear the brush and leaves and moss that covered our square with the pointed shovels. Two of us shoveled, and one used clippers to aid in the safe removal of roots (when I say safe, I mean that if one merely pulls or digs out a system of roots, it can possibly displace artifacts under the surface, or a context boundary. who knows). And I started to write down our observations as we made these removals. Further down the line, we filled many buckets' worth of dirt, and began to sift through them over the tarp, first shaking to release the small pieces of loose dirt, then working through the larger pieces, breaking down clumps, and shaking some more. At this point, there were a lot of leaves mixed in with the dirt, and those had to be checked just in case their roots contained any hints of artifacts, and then tossed into the dirt pile, as they would not sift through the wire mesh. In this manner, with two of us on shovel duty and two on sifting, we dug down about 6 cm, removed most if not all of the brush, and found a number of exciting items during the sifting process. Some of the things that we came across, and bagged, were: Pieces of Porcelain tea-ware, a piece of faux Porcelain made in the US, a slice of the mouthpiece to a long tobacco pipe (which apparently can be cored and dated later), shards of broken glass, and thin wooden pieces potentially from an old fence, among other neat things.

september 28

Today, we were shrunk to a three person group as opposed to four, which made work a bit slower, but not too much. As a class, we went around the yard and briefly examined what all the units had accomplished last week. Most of the groups, like ours, have not dug more than a few centimeters into their plots because first we all have to set up the string and make the beginning measurements and documentations. Today the ground was wet from the rain of the past week. The tarp with our dirt deposits from previous weeks had pockets of rain water, and a lot of the dirt itself was very muddy, as the tarp had prevented the water from seeping into the ground and it had remained there along with the dirt. Our physical unit, as well, was damp and soft, which changed the way it came apart. There were many more clumps of dirt and clay which stuck together until pressured through the sifter. We were trowelling to expose more of the new context, a softer clay/siltish sediment with a gray-light-brown, even orangish in some places, tint to it. We had come upon this layer last week, and the goal for the day was to expose an entire 2 by 2m square of it and in doing so, document our moving on to a new context. It took us most of the class period to do just that, and perhaps that is because we keep coming upon little items of interest. They are not necessarily features that are of great importance, per se, like a building structure, etc. but still they provide hints and clues as to what we may find below, and of what this specific patch of land has gone through over the years. Today we found more of the porcelain and faux porcelain that we had come upon last week, as well as more green and clear colored glass fragments (these ones larger than before). Also, we found another large corroded nail, a rusted copper (?) flat piece with a hole and a small nail through it, perhaps used on a latch or a door or a window. The fact that we are finding all of these little fragments is both slowing us down in terms of getting on to potentially larger scale finds that will be deeper in the ground, and also inspiring us to go further forward because of course it is exciting to actually find things. We kind of came to a realization that with three classes already behind us, there are only three or four more sessions in which to dig. We are not sure how far we will end up getting, and/or what inferences we will be able to make about our plot.

October 5

After a rainy weekend, part of our unit was eroded away (a bit). And a couple of larger rocks which were not visible before have come into view. We spent the beginning part of the class session shovel shaving the damp soil, and then sifting through the dirt, looking for small items of interest. Today, we found a few more pieces of glass, corroded nails, porcelain pieces, and brick fragments. After some time, we were invited into the John Brown House Museum where Mr. Santos showed us around for 30-40 minutes, explaining what would go on in each of the rooms of the house in the days of John Brown himself, and of those who had owned and/or lived in the house afterwards. One interesting part of the tour, especially for us since we’ve been digging outside the house and have never been inside, was the array of porcelain vases topping some of the archways and shelves inside the house as decoration. The Browns had business and trading interests in China and were some of the first to bring these types of porcelain vases to Rhode Island, and the United States. These are of particular interest because we have found similar porcelain pieces in our unit out behind the old house, so we can really make a connection. Perhaps the pieces we found are really that old. Another notable feature was the framed map of providence from 1790, which depicted small versions of the houses and churches and other major features of Providence at that time. It was very interesting to learn that the JBH was one of the first buildings to be built up on the hill that became college hill, along with University Hall. The buildings are not labeled on the map, but Mr. Santos was able to identify them for us, noting the location of the JBH and surrounding structures. Upon returning to our unit, we picked up where we had left off and uncovered the largest stone/rock that we have seen in our unit to date. It has one curved edge, like a gray stone on the side of a well, or a wall, so we are hoping that it is some kind of structural feature. We have yet to uncover it in more detail, but will get right into that next session. We will not return to the site, due to the holiday, for another two weeks, so we are hoping that the weather will not have too large an effect on it before we come back.

October 19

It seems to rain just about every Sunday night before we dig on Monday. Perhaps this softens up the dirt and silt for our shovels and trowels, but it also makes it hard to recognize our unit each time we return to it. New large rocks seem to come out of nowhere, and we seem to not be getting any deeper into the ground. Going on with the same context (JBH 49), we made a point to shovel shave more quickly today so as to go through a greater number of buckets of dirt and get a bit deeper down. We are starting to uncover some larger rocks, which we initially thought could comprise some kind of feature or foundation. However, once we cleared some of the dirt around them to expose what could have been this feature, it turned out that the rocks did not go very far down, and could not arguably have some human causality to their situation. Today we found some pieces of brick, glass, porcelain, and a rusty part of a nail. We hope next week to dig down a bit further and perhaps move on to a new context, as we have been within the mottled clay and soil for quite some time.

October 26

After another rain on Saturday night, the soil was very wet and muddy, at least on the north half of our unit. This made it easier to remove at times. It seems that there is some kind of erosion taking place during rainfall, so that when we come back to our unit the next week, it never looks like it did when we left it. Because we only have a couple more classes in which to dig, we tried today to make a lot of downward progress, and thus, probably filled up more buckets of dirt and sifted through them than we have in one class up until this point. We did not reach a different type of soil, and are still within the mottled clay soil, though there are potentially a couple of small spots where the soil is darker. However, at the end of class, we had dug deep enough to declare a new arbitrary context based on depth. JBH 57. We will start working on this new context next class. Finds for the day included two decently sized porcelain pieces, a few white ware pieces, some brick, a large corroded nail much like the others we have found, and some more pieces of clear glass. We are continuing to find large rocks and stones as we get deeper. The rocks we thought were possible features last time turned out to be natural. We are just scratching the surface of two new large rocks near the middle toward the south wall, so there is potential there.

Nov 2

Today we changed the time of class because of the constraints caused by the earth’s revolution around the sun. I arrived at 2 and Krysta and I continued work on unit 8, first documenting the switch to new context JBH57 with a photograph and the necessary paperwork, and then beginning to shovel shave out from the northeast corner to level the unit out a bit more. Upon widening the area of concentration to the whole east side of the unit, it became obvious that there was a distinctly different darker soil feature in an L-shape in the southeast corner, and had been somewhat there before but was not completely visible. I cleaned up and leveled out this section so that we could document this as a new context JBH58 and take a formal plan photograph. Upon returning to shoveling and troweling to even up the edges around the unit, as well as to continue the leveling process, I came across a black fabric material buried under the dirt in the northwest corner. Seeing that it continued elsewhere and was not easily removable, we decided to level the rest of the unit to the depth of the ‘tarp’, as we eventually called it, and this is when the others showed up and began to help with that. Through this process, Sarah discovered that if you ripped the ‘tarp’ a bit, there were small pebbles and gravel underneath, so it seems that something is buried there, or is part of some structure. Laura discovered another piece of the ‘tarp’ on the opposite side of the unit, the southwest side, so it is possible that it extends almost all the way across our unit. During this time, I was excavating the new context only, because it is an intrusion of this deeper colored dirt into the mottled soil we had been dealing with in the past two contexts, and is thus a newer context historically, and may have its own defining items imbedded therein. After digging down into the L-shaped dark soil until I reached a different type of lighter brown soil, and sifting through that and bagging the results (some glass and rusty nail fragments), I contributed to the sifting of the rest of the unit as we leveled it to the depth of the ‘tarp’. Two other significant finds of the day were Laura’s uncovering of a large red pipe-like object in the southwest corner, above the ‘tarp’, and the continued uncovering of a very large stone in the middle of the unit, whose bottom has yet to be found. All in all, today was a very productive day, and there are all of these leads that we are excited to go on next session. Unfortunately next session we are finalizing and backfilling the units, so we are worried that there are all these things we will not be able to finish. Perhaps, though, students will continue to dig in our spot next year.

Nov 9

I arrived at 2 again, eager to see if we would have enough time today to find out what was underneath the tarp we had uncovered last session. Krysta and I set to work on the Southwest quarter of the unit, in the interest of time. Unfortunately, it was decided that we would not have enough time to uncover the entire tarp, as it extends underneath most of our 2x2m unit. Since there seemed to be an edge to the tarp located about 20cm from the south wall of the unit, we decided to work with this edge so that we could see more than one potential context. After troweling and brushing the dirt off the tarp in that area, we filled out the necessary documentation for photographs and new contexts. The portion in the southeast corner, underneath where feature 1, the L-shaped dark dirt was, was considered JBH63, and everything (what we knew would be gravel) under the tarp was to be considered JBH62. After the pictures and documentation were finished, Laura and Sarah arrived, and while I was jotting down the final notes for the context above the tarp, they peeled back the tarp starting at the South side, about half way across our unit, uncovering a large deposit of gray gravel. Also, while they pulled up the tarp, an additional terra cotta pipe (exactly like the one we found last week near the south wall) kind of popped out of the dirt on the East wall, above where the tarp was buried. This leads me to believe that there might be two other pieces of pipe, on the West and North walls, all of which were put there to weigh down the tarp. Further providing evidence for this is the fact that upon cleaning up the walls later for pictures, Sarah discovered a terra cotta fragment near the North wall. Laura and Sarah proceeded to dig by both hand and trowel to try to get to the bottom of the gravel deposit. We did not have enough time to remove all the gravel, so it would have been great just to get an idea of what was underneath it. Unfortunately, after digging to a depth of 72cm, there was really no end in sight to this gravel deposit, and we are still uncertain as to what it is there for, and what could be under it. This will have to be a job for next year’s crew. Though there is speculation involving a possible filled in dry well, which I will probably look into in my final unit 8 report.