Siham's Field Blog

The 14th of September marked the first day of The Archaeology of College Hill class. Although we met at Wilson to discuss what the class would encompass and the requirements and such, we headed over to the John Brown House to "start digging." I've been to the John Brown House before though I can honestly say I've never paid much attention to the large lawn dotted with trees. However, I did pay close attention when we started walking around looking for dips and partial tarps. There was even information given about what last year's class had started and achieved. It was then that we learned that we were to be broken up into groups to start working on our own units.

There were four units to be worked on and I was randomly selected for Unit 7. Unit 7 was already quite interesting because a shovel-pit test had already been taken in a portion of the unit. A 50cm by 50cm hole had already been dug out, a tarp was laid over it, and it needed to be redug. After quite a while my group managed to uncover the entire tarp, revealing a structure of some sort- stones that were stacked upon each other in a very "wall" kind of way. We covered most of our 1m by 2m unit with a tarp and that was it for the day. Dirty hands and dirty knees, but definitely the most I've achieved on any of the first days of class ever at Brown.

The 21st of September marked the second day of class. Today we roped out our unit 7 with twine while using our southeast corner as the datum. I took the video of the opening of our context 45. Carol and Sara dug, Ben recorded, and I sifted all the contents from the first layer of our dig. I found many objects in sifting, and almost killed a poor worm. I found a fragment of a solo cup as well as parts of what appears to be a charm bracelet, plastic, and more plastic. This indicated "modern" fiddling with the site. The diggers also discovered a dime, dated to 2001. That means that that layer could not be any older than 2001 (but not necessarily from 2001). The diggers also found more stone structures along the line of the known wall. It was quite an interesting day, I left with sneakers with of dirt and really dirty hands, and hopefully stronger biceps from sifting (which apparently is more fun than it looks).

The 28th of September marked the third day of class. Today we attempted to dig down to the end of Context 45. I got to trowel and shovel and I even shifted. I found a nail (which I'm really proud of). But other members, Carol and Sara(h?) found pieces of pottery and broken glass- which is also pretty awesome. The troweling precisely was slightly difficult, given our rock formation- but the measuring with our datum definitely helped keep it in check. I got to use Cindy Lauper today to cut a large piece of branch and actually managed so now we all know that Field Archaeology is Brown's way of hiding a gym class and get us all in shape. While sifting the most substantial thing I found was a cigarette filter. There was also a film crew recording us trowling and digging- for the purposes of the opening of the Rhode Island Hall Archaeology building. All in all, today was a very productive day- with trowling, shoveling, sifting, and filming.

The 5th of October marked the fourth day of class.I took the recordings of the recaps for the different units (until the battery died). During our first Today we finished up our Context 45 and began two new contexts- Context 50 and Context 51. We took the final pictures/beginning pictures of the contexts. Our first objective was to draw the current two contexts in their current states. The Context 51 was more gravely and had the rock features we discovered on earlier days; Context 50 was pretty much the same sand-soil mixture we've seen in Context 45. Both of these contexts were about 10cm down from the datum point. We were supposed to take tours of the John Brown House today, but at that point I was feeling too sick to continue... and went back to bed.

The 19th of October marked the fifth day of class. We all began by explaining what we had done the 2 weeks prior, investigating plastic pipes and more features. Unfortunately one of the units had flooded. In our unit we continued to excavate contexts 50 and 51. I continued my work in context 50, which is the soil-ier part of our unit. Although it had rained and caused our soil to darken, there was definitely a new color soil, a mustard-like one, speckled throughout the eastern wall and parts of the middle. In our context multiple pieces of ceramic were unearthed. Unfortunately the roots are still getting in the way, some much thicker than my own finger. Besides the setback of such tangled roots, we got a decent way down, though not as far as we had hoped for the day. Objects were also found in context 51, including more rock features, nails, and tiles.

The 26th of October marked the sixth day of class. Today only 2 members of Unit 7 were present, which meant serious hauling. Context 51 really didn't have much left to dig, as the stone feature hindered much more digging. Context 50, the one I primarily work on, definitely still had more going for it. We shovel-shaved, troweled the edges, and sifted at least ten buckets of dirt. In this (and during the actual shoveling and digging) we discovered many more pieces of ceramic. These pieces were either just white, or were painted with either blue or brown. We also found more rusted nails. There were many fragments of something that looked like obsidian, as well as fragments of quartz. Our other finds were of pieces of broken, clear glass. We also managed to close off Context 50, and opened Context 56?. This new Context is 24-25cm below the datum. All in all, it was a very productive day, despite our lesser numbers.

The 2nd of November marked the seventh day of class. Today the class actually started earlier than usual, at 2 pm instead of 3pm. Thanks to daylights saving time it is getting much darker much earlier and therefore it will be quite hard to dig. However, that meant I actually made it to class an hour later (as I have class). When I got there Sarah and Carol (and Alex?) were already troweling through our Context 56. It was very similiar to last weeks dig, with the exception of the soil becoming more gravelly. We found the typical ceramic pieces, the obsidian-like rocks, and more quartz and rusty nails. We even discovered a sprinkler-pipe; oddly enough it went right through our rock feature, Feature 2. It seems our new context will begin next week, as the transition in soil is leading to that. However, we may not even do that as we need to backfill.