Caitlin Deal

10-1-12: Site Survey

Monday was our first day of actually doing some work on the Quiet Green. The class split into two groups: one doing a landscape survey of the Quiet Green, and one learning how to use the total station equipment.

I was on the team doing the landscape survey, in which six of us walked from the east side of the Green to the west, and vice-versa, to practice fieldwalking and filling out the form that goes with it. We began with a general debriefing by Linda on how we were going to go about our task, and a review of how to fill out the Survey Unit Form. We then each determined the amount of steps it took us to walk five meters, so that we could keep a standardized distance between walkers.

As the first person in line, I held one of the compasses and was tasked with making sure the group stayed walking in the correct direction. This was important because the Quiet Green is not directly aligned north to south, though it may seem to be, and we had to be careful about staying due east/west.

After everyone had completed their first transects we gathered by where the last walker (with the other compass) had ended, to give our data to the Team Leader to record. We then moved over five more meters and went back the other way. We continued like this for the remainder of the Green. The group didn’t find anything too out of the ordinary in any of the Survey Units; mostly food wrappers and other trash associated with student activities on the Green.

Once we had surveyed the entire Quiet Green, we split into two groups to do complete/gridded surveys of the area immediately surrounding our first trench, at the side of Hope College. My unit didn’t find anything different from what we had found in the rest of the Green (bottle caps, cigarette butts, etc.) but in the other unit a few bits of ceramic, a piece of glass, and a penny were found and bagged for further study. This was when I got my chance to be a Team Leader and fill out the Survey Unit Form, drawing a quick sketch of the unit and marking down the details of the survey.

At the very end of class we met up with the total station team to briefly discuss what we had done, and future plans. The geophysical work that will be done in a few weeks is bound to be interesting, and I am excited for us to move from the Hope College trench to one that could possibly/will hopefully show some signs of the President’s House. Until that time, though, it will be interesting to see what we find during the course of the work at Hope College, as the building is one of the oldest on campus and has gone through a series of renovations through its years as a dormitory.

10/15/12: Geophysical Survey

On Monday we again divided into two groups: one to begin the trench at the side of Hope College and one working with a visitor from Oxford, Tommy, using a terrifyingly expensive geophysics machine to survey the area of, and immediately surrounding, where we think the original president’s house stood.

I was a part of the latter group. One of the first things we did was to set up a grid using the Pythagorean Theorem to make 3-4-5 triangles and create two parallel lines, 18 meters apart, within which to run the machine.

Tommy instructed us on how to work the machine and made the first few passes from the east end of the grid to the west and back again. He readily answered all of our questions about how one gets a machine like this, what exactly it does, and what was appearing on the screen. Needless to say, I understood very few of the terms he used when telling us how the machine worked. However, the gist of it was that the antenna emitted electromagnetic waves, and when these waves hit something under the ground, they reflected from the object and created an image on the screen. The shape on the screen did not necessarily reflect the shape of the object that was reflecting the electromagnetic waves.

After each pass we would move the machine over by half of a meter and then turn it around to go back. As it happened, the machine was about half a meter wide so this made our job a lot easier. Each person in our group (I think) had a chance to strap on the battery pack and screen and pull the antennae along behind them. In this way we covered a large section of ground that, once Tommy has put the data together, will hopefully yield some interesting information on what we might be able to find once we begin our trench in the area.

During the time when I was not helping to move the measuring tape and machine over, taking pictures, etc, I had a chance to go and see what the other group was doing. When I went over it seemed as if the main products of their excavation were bits of glass, but some nails and pieces of ceramic were found as well. It was surprising to see just how much they had already found, just by digging/scraping a few inches into the soil.

At the end of class, those in my group that hadn’t before used the total station got a hands-on lesson as we marked the final points of the trench at Hope College, and then we helped to pack up the materials used in our geophysical survey as well as covering the trench with a tarp. I’m not sure how well the tarp will hold up to strong winds or curious students, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

It was a great experience to use the geophysical equipment, as it’s something that has a wide range of uses but, due to the price of renting and/or owning one, many projects do not use them. Also, I just looked at the image that Tommy composed of the data that we collected, and I’m interested in seeing what we can make of it, as personally I’m not really sure what to be looking for.

10-22-12: QG1

Today I had my first taste of excavating. As always, we split into groups. One group continued to work on the first trench, another began a second trench (hoping to find one of the previous paths leading from Hope College), and others worked the total station and took pictures.

Along with Ariana and Peter, I was working on the first trench. This past weekend was Family Weekend, and some students worked on the trench on Saturday, so when we began we were continuing work on Context 4.

Our main tool of the day was the trowel, which we used to scrape away at the soil. Once we had accumulated enough, we then scooped the dirt into dustpans, and deposited it into large buckets, to be sifted later. We also used brushes of various sizes and shapes (ranging from the end of a broom to a toothbrush) to define things before we dug them out. Most notable was the pile of rubble that was flush again the side of the staircase. After defining the rocks using trowels and brushes, we took pictures before removing them (we also took pictures at the end of each context, and during the process of excavating). This rubble pile became Context 5, and after its removal we scraped more dirt away to reveal the same light, sandy soil as was in the rest of the trench. This layer became Context 6, though we did not have time to begin work on it.

Today was the first time that I used the sifter as well, which was also a good experience to have. When using the trowel, I wondered at what we were missing, because it seemed as if we were easily catching the smaller bits of glass. However, it was only with the sifter that we found most of the ceramics and the nails, proving how important this simple addition is.

It took us nearly the whole class to finish Context 4 and get to a sandy, lighter-colored soil, but we did find a number of interesting things. We found another unused bullet casing, quite a few pieces of glass, and multiple pieces of ceramic that were different colors and had different patterns. For example, there were a few pieces of a plain black type, but then there were also blue pieces with decoration (though we don’t know if they came from the same original piece, or different ones—my guess is on different ones). Under the rubble pile, we discovered a hole in the ground that, from our first examination, appears rather deep. Finding it was a surprise, and we’re not really sure why it’s there, but after finding it we had to proceed even more carefully, as the rocks and dirt around it are loose and could come out rather easily by accident.

Peeking out from Context 6 is an iridescent, purple-ish curved something that we think must be a pipe, but again, we didn’t have time to excavate its context and this will have to wait until next week, which I look forward to. A reporter from the BDH also visited us today, along with the videographer that has been capturing our progress along the way. It was definitely chillier today than last week, perhaps made more noticeable by remaining in the shade the whole time, but it can only get colder from here on out. I, for one, am not looking forward to excavating in normal fall-into-winter temperatures, so I hope the warmth stays for a while more.

11-5-12: QG 1 continued

Today was the penultimate day of digging. I continued work on QG 1 with Peter, Ariana, and Chris K, as Linda supervised.

This was the first day that we had to deal with the chill of fall, along with the sun setting an hour earlier due to the end of daylight saving time. This made for an apprehensive start to the digging, but in the end didn’t affect us too much.

We began work by tentatively removing the tarp from our trench, not knowing what to expect due to the wind and rain from the hurricane last week, which caused our class to be cancelled. However, we were fortunate to only find leaves in our trench, with the ground a little muddy but not unmanageable by any means.

Sifting, toweling, and sweeping continued at before. We began work on Context 6 by trying to remove some of the larger rocks blocking our work, along with the pipe-shaped object that we had first seen two weeks ago. Once we concentrated our work on that area, we saw the artifact was actually much thicker than we had originally assumed—probably around 1 cm. Also, the curve of the object is so slight that, if it was a pipe, it would have had to have been a rather large one. Linda suggested that it could also be part of a roof tile, which seems more plausible to me at this point due to the curvature, the size, and the coloring.

In Context 6 (and then 7) we also found more bits of ceramic, pieces of glass, and some very large earthworms. Unfortunately, no more bullet casings were found. There was one particularly large piece of glass that had a pattern/texture on one side, and a few that were colored a deep green/black. Some odd pieces of metal were found, but I’m not sure what they could be, based on what I saw. We also found some more pieces of the purple curved object, one large and several other smaller ones. The roof-tile idea would make sense here, as one can imagine stray tiles breaking during construction/repair of Hope College.

As for the hole that we uncovered last week, we tried to leave it alone and go gently around the surrounding area, as we don’t want to make it any larger unnecessarily. A photo log was kept as always, as well as recording our work on the unit forms.

11-12-12: The Final (official) Day

Monday was our last official day of digging, but we will be doing a final, optional day on Saturday, to hopefully finish the contexts and close out one last time.

On Monday I did not dig at QG1, but rather worked on the recording sheet and helped to sift when necessary. Thankfully the day was relatively warm and sunny, unlike the chilly day we had feared after last week.

In QG1, we continued to find more of the same material as on previous days and in previous contexts. More pieces of the strange curved pipe/roof tile/ceramic were found, a few being rather large. We also discovered pieces of glass, ceramic, metal, and more of the unknown, shiny black rock that we had previously found. The glass was mostly tiny slivers and small pieces, though one piece was colored a very dark brown. Most of the ceramics did not seem to be diagnostic, but there were a few pieces (two or three, I think) with distinctive patterns on them that someone with the right expertise and tools might be able to identify. As to the metal, we found several small pieces that are likely nails (as always, all the metal found is highly corroded), and one very large piece which have no hypotheses about. There was also a high concentration of charcoal in some parts of this context, which we did not keep but noted on the recording sheet. We also continued to uncover pieces of slate, which often tempts those working in the trench into thinking that they have found a new artifact.

I’m interested to see what we can do with the five hours that we’re taking to finish the trenches on Saturday. I’m not looking forward to backfilling QG1, but at the same time I’m curious as to what we will be able to determine about the artifacts that we have found once we start working in the lab.

11-17-12: The Last Last Day

Today was an optional day for digging, and we were at the trenches from eleven to four. Thankfully, it was another beautiful day that, for the most part, wasn’t too cold.

We continued digging in context seven, discovering the same sort of artifacts as before: shards of glass, small bits of ceramics, the odd metal bit, and pieces of the purple ‘pipe’. Some of the glass was colored, and a few of the ceramic sherds were patterned.

After a few hours of work in QG1 we were able to close context seven and open context eight. Here we found some rather large pieces of the purple ‘pipe’, along with what has come to be the normal finds of glass and ceramic.

From the side of the trench (therefore from an unknown context) we collected a few items, including an interestingly-shaped piece of yellow glass that perhaps we can learn more about with further study.

I had to leave around 2:30 and so unfortunately did not get to help close the trenches. After this we will be spending class and section time in the lab, trying to make sense of the things that we have found.