Christina DiFabio

October 1, 2012: Quiet Green Survey

This week, our class began our investigation of the Quiet Green by splitting into two groups: one doing a walking survey, and the other using the total station. I was part of the field survey group, which walked the area of the Quiet Green in order to note the general plan of the area and record any interesting features and artifacts (although mainly trash in our situation).

After a quick debriefing by Linda, we started by figuring out our individual paces for five meters. After a few walks, we determined our pace and were ready to start our survey. We had six walkers at a time, with five meters placed in between each person. We started on the west end of the green and walked east, until we reached the line of buildings. For the next unit, we walked east to west, and alternated in the same fashion for the subsequent units.

After six transects of 30 meters in width, we completed the general survey of the entire Quiet Green. Most features were commemorative plaques, lampposts, and lounging students. The most common trash was cigarette butts, but many paper and plastic items were also found. Then we completed an intense survey of the area on the west side of Hope College where we are intending to excavate. This comprised of two 5m by 5m units. While more trash was found, some interesting artifacts were present (glass, ceramic pieces, and a penny), which we kept for further study. Finding these items just from a survey of the area made me excited for the actual excavation in the upcoming weeks.

I did not realize beforehand how important direction and keeping pace with the others are during a survey. A few times I had to adjust my alignment while walking, and my sketch for the transect I recorded wasn’t the best, but by the end I think I got a real feel for it. An unexpected, but pleasant, surprise was that Brown Media Services came to record our class! I was very excited to get our project underway, and I’m glad that the whole Brown community is also excited about our investigation. Plus it was a gorgeous day; how better to spend the afternoon than being outside on the beautiful Quiet Green?

October 15, 2012: First Day of Excavation – Hope College Trench

For our second week of fieldwork, we split into two groups again. One group worked with our visiting geophysicist Tommy to perform a geophysical survey of the area, while the other (which I was part of) opened our first trench on the West side of Hope College. The trench is directly to the left of the middle door on the side of the building facing the Quiet Green.

Morgan and Pete began by marking the trench with orange string and cleared off the surface of the trench, which was mostly covered with leaves. Caity and I started by keeping records. Once the trench area was cleared, Linda showed us how to properly take photos of the trench, including the proper labels for the white board. I kept the photo log for the opening and closing of the first context, or first layer of excavation.

While excavating, we used trowels and dustpans to remove the layers of soil, and placed the loosened soil into a bucket to be later sifted. Later, as we were well into the second context, we used a pick-like tool to greater loosen the soil, then shovel it out. While I was digging for the second context, I was surprised by how much broken glass I found, even without sifting the soil. During the excavation in the first context, we found an interesting piece of ceramic which was white with black numbers. Then later while sifting the soil, we found another sherd which seems to be related to the first one; it had the same white body and had an orange cartoon sun with the black letters AUG, presumably for August. We were speculating that these sherds belonged to a ceramic mug or bowl of some sort which had a calendar on it, possibly for a child. In addition, some metal pieces were found, including a coin, nails, and even a possible bullet casing.

Even though our finds are most likely not very old since these were only the first layers, I was excited by the quantity of the material we found. I’m looking forward to continuing our excavation next week to see if the quantity will hold up as we remove older layers of soil. It will also be interesting to study this more modern material in the context of what we know about the modern day Brown community. One challenge during the excavation was the amount of plant and tree roots present in our trench. There were some which were somewhat difficult to cut with our pliers! I think this will continue to be a challenge as we go forth, but will not significantly hinder any progress. Overall, I was very excited to learn excavation techniques, and look forward to practicing them again next week.

October 22, 2012: Second Day of Excavation – Hope College

On our second day of excavation, one group continued with the trench we opened directly next to the stairs of the middle door on the west side of Hope College, and another group opened a second trench a bit farther from the building. We decided to start this new trench because it would be in line with what probably was once the path to the main entrance of the building, when the Quiet Green was still the main area of campus for the University.

I was part of the second group consisting of Caity, Joe, and Chris, and supervised by Alex; we began by first outlining where our new trench would be. Then using the measuring tape, we measured the distance between the stairs of Hope and our trench, and arbitrarily decided to mark one corner of our trench at 3m from the stairwell. To make our trench a 1m by 1m square, we started measuring 1m from our first corner marked by a stake (going away from the building). Then, we found our third corner by measuring a hypotenuse triangle to make sure that we had accurate 90° angle, and repeated this for the fourth corner. Each side of the trench was re-measured to ensure accuracy.

After outlining the trench with orange string and taking our first context opening picture, we were ready to start digging. Caity and I removed the first layer, containing mostly grass, with shovels to expose the earth for excavating. Chris recorded the data on the excavation forms while the rest of us dug with trowels, as we did last week. Compared to the trench right by Hope, we found significantly less material culture in this area. Although the door by which we are digging is no longer an entrance, this seems to indicate that there is more activity on the west side closer to the building than by the former pathway, which is to be expected.

The soil also did not seem to change as quickly; we stayed in the first context for most of the excavation, but did switch to a second context near the end of the class period due to a slight increase in excavated materials. Our findings included a penny, some pieces of glass, and a few pieces of ceramic. Another notable item was a pink pill-shaped plastic piece I found in the upper left corner of the trench (when facing Hope); we were unsure of what purpose it served, but it will be interesting to further analyze it in lab. I also look forward to comparing our findings in the two trenches, and interpreting how the data reflects student life on campus.

November 5, 2012: Learning How to Use the Total Station

This week while the rest of the class was continuing the excavations at the QG1 and QG2 trenches, I learned how to use the total station by working with Morgan and Alex. Since I had only worked in the trenches so far, I was interested in learning more about this machine and how it helps us accurately map our progress in the trenches.

Although we had some difficulties balancing the tripod for the total station, Morgan and I were able to set it up with Alex’s help. We placed the total station in the normal spot: on a designated mark in the path by Manning Hall which goes from the Van Wickle Gates to the Main Green. I learned how to balance the machine and how to maneuver it when we took our reference point (already known from backsitting) on the corner of Prospect and College Streets by the John Hay Library. Basically, the machine projects a laser to the place where we are taking a reference point (where someone stands with the prism). The laser reflects off of the prism back to the station, which processes the distance to produce a coordinate for our new point.

While we were waiting to take reference points for the trenches, Morgan and I helped out with the excavations. I worked in QG2; the group made significant progress by the end of the class period. Although material culture was still scarce in this trench, at one point the group found a sprinkler line which seems to run from Hope to an area of the Quiet Green by Carrie Tower. Morgan and I found the two irrigation system covers for the line, then took points. I held the prism while she worked the total station; we took two points for the sprinkler line in the trench (one on each end), and then four points around each irrigation cover plate. We continued to take six points (four corner points and two middle points) for the closing of context six in QG1.

After continuing with some more excavation, we finished the day by taking six points for QG2, in the same way which we took points for QG1. While I would definitely need to work with the total station a few more times to fully understand all of the steps involved in setting it up and taking points, it was interesting to work on a different aspect of the project. I also look forward to seeing the processed data to understand the applications of this machine.

November 12, 2012: Final Day of Excavation

This class period was our last one dedicated to fieldwork on the Quiet Green. I worked with Morgan again to set up the total station in order to take points for the trenches. Although we had some trouble with the machine connecting to blue tooth, we were able to balance and backset the total station more easily than last week.

After preparing the total station, Morgan and I helped out with the excavations of QG1 and QG2. I mainly helped with QG2, which has come far along in the excavation. When I joined, the group was already working on the third context, and was getting close to closing this context and opening a new one. A change was evident because the previous context had a dark brown/grey soil, while the emerging context had some lighter grey and lighter brown/orange tones. As we reached this new context, we hit grey stone which seems to cover most of this layer of the trench. Although we did not get to fully examine it during this class period, we were able to even out the excavation of the trench and reveal this layer.

It has been speculated that this stone might belong to a path that was present when the main entrance to Hope College was on the west side and there was a gate by the north side of Hope. It is hard to tell due to the small size of our trench. Further investigation would need to be done to figure out whether this stone is part of a larger feature. Once it was getting dark, we closed the third context of QG2. Overall, there was not a great amount of material culture found from this day’s excavation. To end the day, Morgan and I took points with the total station for both trenches (six per trench, as was done last week).

It was mentioned that we may continue digging over the weekend, which would be nice to finish up any loose ends due to the shortened class period. Otherwise, it has been great to learn some basic archaeological techniques. While I think I need more experience with the techniques to be completely comfortable with them, especially with setting up the total station, I am glad I have been able to get a taste of archaeological fieldwork. In the next coming weeks, I look forward to artifact analysis to interpret our material culture findings and see what conclusions we can draw from our investigation.

November 19, 2012: QG2 Artifact Analysis

Today we met at the Carriage House in order to continue our artifact analysis, which we began at our last Thursday section. Subsequently, we will continue to meet at the Carriage House for class and section from now on. Our first task in artifact analysis was to wash our finds (except metal) and categorize them by types of material. On Thursday, I worked with the artifacts from QG2, so today I continued to work with this material.

The artifacts from QG2 were separated in bags according to the context and type of material. As we washed the artifacts, we did the same: we created groups based on the context and type of material when we were placing them on drying racks. Typically, each context had its own drying rack, except for the last two contexts (4 and 5) which were closed on the final day excavation the past Saturday. To clean the artifacts, we carefully brushed the dirt of with water and toothbrushes. While the artifacts were drying on the racks, we made labels for each group of material.

Then we started categorizing the artifacts within these groups. I specifically worked on the context 1 material to see if any artifacts could be related to each other. During excavation, the different pieces of glass seemed to be random finds to me, but I was surprised that I could easily create some groups, based on the same color and thickness. Unfortunately the wifi was not working in the building, so I could not use any online databases to do any further research, but hopefully I will be able to do so next class.

Finally, Chris K. and I took pictures of the groups of artifacts for QG2 with ID cards and a scale that Alex made. We also tried to take pictures of interesting individual artifacts, but unfortunately we had trouble with the lighting and focus. We may have a more precise camera next class to use for these individual pictures, which will be important for interpreting specific finds.

November 26, 2012: Continuing Artifact Analysis

Since we finished washing and categorizing the artifacts from the two trenches last week, today we continued attempting to date our artifacts and compiling our data. I specifically worked on creating an Excel document that would be a digital copy of our photo log for the excavations and the recovered artifacts.

From the hand-written photo log sheets from the excavation, I copied all of the data into the Excel file. However, part of the log had arbitrary numbers for the photos instead of the actual photo number encoded in the cameras we used. I was able to input all of the data which did have the proper photo numbers, but will need to look back through the digital photos to properly ascribe a number to these certain photos in the log.

Fortunately it won’t be difficult to go back through the photos, it will just take time. I will continue to create the digital photo log this week and hopefully have it completed by our Thursday section, so everyone will be able to access the document while working on their final projects. As Alex pointed out to us, this is a small, but very important, detail about recording. I now realize the importance of taking good records in the field (especially because I used the arbitrary numbers for part of the log during excavations) to facilitate the analysis of our data.