Alyssa's Field Blog

September 14, 2009 (Monday)

I was surprised that as a seminar-length class meeting for the first time we not only met for the full class period but our first meeting included physical labor. After a brief explanation of the course structure, we walked ourselves over to the John Brown House to familiarize ourselves with the site. I was surprised when I realized the area we would be working in for the duration of the semester. I lived in the Keeney dormitory last year, so the John Brown House was something I often walked by. Although I knew that the house itself was a historical site, it never occurred to me that the unoccupied ground held its own historical value. I'm excited to see what we will be able to find in this area that so often goes unnoticed.

Once we were at the site, Krysta and Elise walked us around the site, explained what was done last year, and also showed us the areas we would be focusing on this semester. They then split us up into groups of 3's and 4's and assigned us a unit. I, along with 3 other people, was located at Unit 6. Our task for the day was to remove all the backfilling from last year's class. Me and my recently manicured hands were not pleased to discover that this would require actual physical work with a shovel and trowel in the dirt, but once we got started, it was kind of fun getting to play in the dirt. The only difficult parts were when we had to try and dig around some stubborn plant roots and trying to figure out where exactly the tarp left behind began and ended. But the shoveling and removal of dirt was fairly straightforward and not too trying.

By the end of the class period, our group was able to remove all the backfill and get to the point where the last team of excavators had ended. It looks like next week we'll have a lot of huge rocks to work with/work around, so it should be interesting to learn how we should proceed from this point.

September 21, 2009 (Monday)

Today's class definitely involved a lot more manual labor than last week's class. We began by touring the site and having each unit update the whole group on what they were able to accomplish the previous week. After the niceties were over, we split back up into our units and got to work.

Our first task was to create a common site between Unit 6 and Unit 7 (whichever unit is directly south of 6) where we could dump and sieve our dirt. Next, we roped off our unit and took a formal picture. I had to narrate a short video before we began which was a little awkward since I hate the sound of my own voice. But having a narrated video to document the unit at the beginning of the day should prove very useful. After the picture, we found our datum point (SW point) and measured the differences in elevation around our unit in order to determine what sides would need the most digging.

When the "set-up" was complete, we started the actual digging. The weather was beautiful, but once we'd been working for a while, the heat definitely started to make me tired and work a little bit more sluggishly. Using flat shovels, we worked on removing the layer of topsoil surrounding the hole from last year's Unit 5. I actually spent a lot of my time pulling up and cutting the network of roots that had found their way into almost every inch of our unit. Some of those roots ran across the entire unit, so it was hard to find a way to get rid of them without disturbing the soil too much. We were able to dig to a point where we began to see a new context (a yellowish soil level). So, our main tasks for the day were shovel shaving, pulling up roots, and sieving. My upper body and my hands did not like the idea of sieving, but it does, of course, produce good finds. We were able to find a few things, including brown glass, green glass, a piece of brick, and, Elise's personal favorite, a shard from a clay pipe.

September 28, 2009 (Monday)

The day started off with our, what I assume routine, tour of the site during which the different units explained what they accomplished last week. After the tour, we split into our unit groups and got to work.

Our work today consisted of trowelling, sieving, and more trowelling. We started off by trying to define the edges of our unit better. After that, we took a measurement to find how far down the new context that we discovered last week (the yellowy-clay like soil) was from our datum point. Once we measured that, we took our formal picture and video to document our new context. We then worked on trying to even out the surface of our unit and find a new context for the rest of the unit. We realized that a rocky layer of gravel was present throughout the unit, so we worked on trying to expose that surface throughout the whole unit. Towards the end of the day it appeared that Alex found the edges (or remainder) of a brick pathway, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out next week. Our other finds consisted of plastic beads and pieces of a plastic drinking lid. Lessons for the day: don't disturb your baulks, don't kneel too closely to the edges of your unit, and always sweep up before the boss comes and evaluates your day's work.

I genuinely enjoyed myself today. I was sleepy and in a bad mood when I first got to the site, but methodically digging and doing something physical really put me in a better mood. And I found that listening to my IPod (which I hope isn’t an archaeologist etiquette “no-no”) made the work seem easier and more fun. Now that we’re starting to see a new context and possibly new feature emerge, I’m really excited to get back to the unit next week.

October 5, 2009 (Monday)

It’s official. I really like digging.

Today, we started off with our site tour and then we got to work on our individual units. Two of us worked on JBH 46 while two of us worked on defining where JBH 48 began and ended. Although the two people working within JBH 46 did some shovel shaving, the majority of our work still consists solely of the use of the trowel and dustpan. The main difficulties we encountered today were a massive root running through the center of JBH 46 (that we all hope to attack with an axe) and the large amount of rocky rubble present throughout JBH 48. Sieving for JBH 48 was also more difficult than usual because the large amount of rocks not only makes the buckets deceivingly heavy, but it's more difficult to differentiate between rocks and artifacts than soil and artifacts.

By the end of the day, we made three significant discoveries. The first thing that we discovered was that JBH 46 had become a new context. We cleaned up the area, took a formal picture, and designated the area JBH 52. We also decided (for the moment) that the western side of JBH 48 was also a new context, and next week we plan on cleaning up the area and declaring it a new context. We’re also starting to see a fair amount of bricks in JBH 48—at least 4 large pieces of brick. Our other finds in JBH 48 were multiple pieces of iron, possibly iron nails, slate, and pieces of yellow brick.

We cut our digging day short by taking a tour of the John Brown House until the class day was over. We didn’t have too much time, so we only got a quick tour of the first floor. The tour guide had a lot of interesting information about the house and the surrounding landscape, and I’d like to go back at another time to hear about the rest of the house.

October 19, 2009 (Monday)

Today was our return to the site after our two week break. We began with our usual site tour and then split up into our groups.

At the end of our last dig, we had just designated a new context, JBH 52 on the eastern side of the unit. Two people worked on that context while another person and I worked on leveling off the surface of JBH 48.

The work got pretty painful at times and was especially hard on my knees and lower back. I had to do a lot of squatting in unit 5 to reach the areas that we had been ignoring. There are a lot, like, a lot, of rocks, rubble, and gravel in that context and it was very difficult to trowel through the large amounts of big rocks. Sieving through the rubble is especially difficult, not only because the load is extremely heavy, but it takes a long time to sift through all the rocks in order to find anything of interest. Today made me tired. I can’t imagine having to do this kind of labor as a full day’s worth of work…Ouch.

There was a good amount of finds today. We found a lot of large brick chunks (both yellow and red), pieces of slate, some small pieces of ceramic, iron nails, and our big find, a piece of electric insular wiring (I think that’s what we decided it was). In the northeastern area of the unit, we also uncovered what seems to be an iron step, or at least a large piece of iron, protruding from the side of the unit. Overall, we got a lot of digging done today. Thanks to our “super-trowelling” technique, we are really making progress in terms of the depth of our unit.

October 26, 2009 (Monday)

Today was another work intensive day. We started off by taking levels and then we got to digging. Two people continued working on JBH 52 while three of us basically attacked JBH 48. We only have two weeks left of digging, and we’re trying to get down to the level of an architectural feature. For the most part, my work today consisted of troweling as quickly and evenly as possible and also delineating the walls so that we can better see the stratigraphy.

The composition is still rocky rubble fill, so sieving today was just as painful as it was last week. After a period of aggressively troweling the area, the soil composition started to become much more damp and sandy. We decided to designate the strip along the north side and most of the southern side JBH 54. We cleaned up the area a bit and took a formal picture and then took new levels.

My “big” find for the day was a round rock set in a large chunk of asphalt. There were also many other large chunks of asphalt. I also found some pieces of mortar, a lot of iron nails, pieces of red brick, a chunk of clear glass, and the outer shell of a pencil.

Hopefully next week we’ll be able to get past the rubble fill layers and start to see the larger remains of some sort of architectural feature.

November 2, 2009 (Monday)

Today was our last full day of digging. I got there early and for the bit of class, there were only two of us working in Unit 6. I wasn’t pleased that it was drizzling at the beginning of class nor was I terribly inspired by the nose-dripping, hand-numbing cold, but I guess it could have been worse. Within the first half hour, we were able to uncover several large stones and, even more excitingly, a large chunk of marble.

We decided to focus solely on JBH 58 because that was the area where we were uncovering large amounts of sizeable stones. At first, when the other three members arrived, it was hard to figure out how to situate ourselves in a way that allowed everyone to productively work in the space. Eventually, we figured out how to position ourselves, and we were able to get a lot done.

After a while, we declared a new context, JBH 61, because the soil started to consist of large rocks piled on top of each other and we began uncovering many large patches of sandy mortar. This was definitely a welcome change from the infinite amounts of rubble rocks that made sieving a miserable task. We finished the day by cleaning up the wall edges and trying to expose as much rock as possible.

I didn’t want to stop digging today because we were really starting to find a lot of great things. We found a lot of pieces of iron (two of them were obviously remains of fixtures and had really cool shapes), lots of bricks, asphalt, mortar, and other various small finds. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find something decisive next week before we have to close up for the semester.

November 9, 2009 (Monday)

Our last day in the field :( I got there a little early, and for the first half hour I worked on neatening the wall of the east side of the unit. After that, we took our final photo and wall profile photos. It was so weird to see a picture of our “completed” excavation vs. what the unit looked like on our first day of digging.

Next, we had to create the profile view drawing of the wall. After some debate, we decided to record the south wall because it had the most obvious levels of stratigraphy. We split the wall into two 1-meter sections and worked in pairs—one person was sketching on graph paper and another person was measuring the levels on the wall. I worked on measuring the wall. We had a fairly easy section because we only had 2 stratigraphy levels—JBH 48 and JBH 54.

After we finished our sketches, the fun (and by fun I mean labor-intensive) part started. Backfilling. First, the members of our unit shoveled the dirt right next to our unit, but then we had to start moving the dirt that was in the sieving area. Eventually, we had the whole class helping us transport buckets from the sieving area to Units 6 and 7. We worked until it was dark outside, and by the end of our shoveling marathon we were using car headlights to light the site.

My hands hurt and my back is sore, but it was a very satisfying day of work. It was kind of sad to fill up our unit and see all real evidence of our weeks of work disappear, but I’m also excited for this next stage of our class as we work in the lab.