Chris Thompson

On Tuesday we began the survey portion of our archaeological work. This meant fieldwalking, and use of the Total Station. I was a Fieldwalker. This entailed a lot of walking and turning of the head. Six of us made a line, each of us about five meters apart (that is eight steps for me). We walked forward either due east or due west and looked. We looked: at a point ahead of us to keep straight, our fellow fieldwalkers on either side to keep properly paced, and most importantly on the ground to look for artifacts. We fieldwalked the entire quiet green, and found many things: any bottles (whole and broken), paper and plastic trash, much of it food-related, and cigarette butts were, by far, our most common find. This showed the space had been used for recreation: recreation by consumption. However a shattered pencil I found also indicates some work went on at a point.

We also found many picnickers who were either very curious or kind of cold to us fieldwalkers.

We did an intensive survey around Hope College and found some items that were collected. These items were: two small pieces of ceramic, a coin, and an old piece of green glass. I am excited to look at these things closer, and am surprised at the extent such seemingly mundane items (these aren’t ancient swords or bejeweled crowns) have captured my interest. Considering the amount of contemporary broken glass we found around the edges of Slater, Hope College, and even University Hall, indicates, to me at least, the amount of glass that must be buried across the campus of this school. Bottles, especially ones that held alcohol, have been used (and then broken) for many, many years at this school (as long as students have drunk recreationally).

A team worked with a Total Station surveying device to more precisely place points for trenches. This tool uses an established grid, and a laser sight to place points, much more accurately than GPS, or other methods can. We marked possible locations of the Old President’s House, as well as a trench outside of Hope College.

I am very excited to start the digging portion of this research. Even with our small finds I am much more confident that we will find old things, even if they are small or broken.

WEEK 2: Geophysics Work and Excavation

Today we pulled out the big tools. This meant not only the sifter (I things the biggest thing we used on the digging portion) but also a geophysics machine.

I initially worked with the geophysics team. This meant laying out a large rectangle of measuring tape, and accurately squaring the corners. This rectangle would dictate the area we scanned using the machine. One of us suited up – a battery pack around the belt, a monitor hanging from our chests, and then the handle that pulled the sled, which carried the antennae across the ground. We took turns walking at a slow pace, dragging the equipment behind us. We stopped at the edge of the rectangle, and moved over a floating measuring tape – which dictates the path of the machine – and with the help of another student, flipped it around and walked back; almost like mowing the lawn, careful not to miss a swath.

Today I met briefly with Tommy and saw how much progress he had made. He had taken the recording of each layer and put them together, calculated an average of the speed of the radio waves in the ground, (among many other things) and showed me a layer-by-layer view of the results. We saw dark areas on the higher layers indicating the tree roots, and the path. Interestingly, a large swath of something was found not below the surface in a large triangle of the western portion of our scan. Tommy suggested it might have been the remnants of an old path. Most interestingly, we found some indications of material around two meters below the surface in the northwest corner of the scan. I am anxious to see what we can feasibly do to explore this.

I realized more subtle things during the process. For example how much time archaeologists have to chat – it was neat getting to know the people in our class, as well as talking to Linda and Alex about their experiences digging, and hearing about the places Tommy has used geophysics equipment – as diverse as England, the Artic, and deserts.

It was neat working on something that garnered so much interest from people not involved with the project, many of whom were just walking by. It might have been that we were taking their study spots on the quiet green, but they had a lot of (friendly) questions, inquisitive looks, even a visit from a family with small children. I think this reflects an interest by people in the past, and gives me a satisfaction for the work we are doing.

Week 3: Excavation

Today I worked as recorder on our new trench. We opened the trench about five feet directly in front of the stones steps that lead up to the western entrance to Hope College. This trench is meant to straddle what we assume to have been a path. This was the main entrance and exit of Hope College for many years and we hope material evidence of this has been left; I am interested to see if we find physical evidence of a the actual old path.

We began the process by marking with stakes the corners of a 1-meter by 1-meter trench. We used a tape measure to square the corners, matching up a hypotenuse of 1.41 meters to the 1-meter mark. We used orange string to delineate the edge of our trench – we were ready to dig. I wrote mostly, though. The job of the recorder is to keep careful notes, describing found features, marking bags of artifacts, as well as completing forms as changes in context dictate. Today we worked with the first context, and then opened the second after finding a greater concentration of artifacts. This included a piece of ceramic with some blue design, as well as some metal pieces, and stone that looked like obsidian. Alex remained dubious about it being obsidian.

Other interesting finds of today: the team working on Trench #1 found two more bullet casings. This brings the count up to three. I am interested to see if we find more. Near the surface of Trench #2 we found three pennies. They dated, respectively, from 1975, 1980, and 1982. I wonder if someone has plotted the median variety of pennies that individuals have in their pockets in the past. For example, we look at these three years on these pennies and can tell that, assuming they were dropped together, they were dropped on year X, based on the data that individuals in year X carried a higher number of pennies from 1975, 1980, 1982. I do not know if these kind of data has ever been recorded. It would require someone to extensively record what year pennies everyone was carrying around.

A reporter from the BDH interviewed several of us, and seemed very interested in the project. I have mentioned before, it is neat to see so much interest in the class from members of the community.

November 5, 2012: Continued Excavation

On Monday we continued to dig; I worked in Trench #2. We began the day continuing context #2, the same context we opened two weeks ago. Except for our lost class period, the hurricane of last week had done little damage to the dig; the ground was soaked, and a layer of limp leaves covered the trench. Much worse was the damage down by Daylight Savings – the sun chased our progress chapping our fingers and lips.

Progress for trench #2 went more quickly today. Joe and I used shovels to scrape away layers of soil (which were then deposited in the buckets for sifting for artifacts). This sped our progress, and helped us to more quickly dig through layers that offered little more than broken glass and a couple of nails. Our team was keen on finding evidence of the old path that we assumed ran through the location of the trench; we were rewarded about an hour and a half into the dig. Although it may or may not be part of an old path, we found a large stone in the middle of trench tens of centimeters from the surface. We discussed how excavation would proceed around it as much as possible (pedestalling), and then continued digging.

Another note: a pipe transected our trench seeming to run from Hope College to a sprinkler node farther out on the Quiet Green. It seems to be very modern, planted within the last couple of decades. We dug around it, especially careful not to nick it.

November 12, 2013: Excavation

A record of change in contexts is absolutely central to accurate and scientific archaeological work, and the question of when soil quality would require a change in context has tagged along with me from the first couple centimeters of excavation from the surface. Below the large stone in the center of the trench we finally came upon a change in soil quality – it was a much lighter brown soil that spread evenly out over the trench. We cleared out the rest of the dark soil, marked the location of the large stone, and closed Context #2.

This Monday I returned to Quiet Green Trench #2. The weather was unseasonably warm and sunny, the ground was damp and when we kneeled a thin slice of mud curled onto pants. I excavated, which meant I did the same things I did last week: sifting, using a trowel to scrape away layers of dirt and pebble, using a shovel to move more soil, and a broom to clean up what we were looking at. I think the broom proved the hero of the day as I struggled to make out what we were looking at, or for.

Our excavation was fruitful. We worked through context 2. The soil seemed to be denser; more clay heavy than context 1, little pebbles and broken slate seeded the dirt and made the trowel work somewhat difficult. I found what looked like a large piece of charcoal in the center of the trench some minutes into digging. Alex looked at it: apparently it was too dense to be charcoal. Linda suggested it might be a burnt brick. We smelled it, and realized it was asphalt. It still had that acrid tarry smell. And this was cool: that this asphalt, who-knows-old, smells just like our own asphalt is a neat parallel. I think the past is so hard to grasp our minds around, we create these mythical narratives and motifs to understand them. Somehow this little rock humbled these ideas and reminded me: the human past is human, and they made asphalt just like we do now.

Along the northern half of the trench we found (Joe actually) a large, flat piece of slate lying horizontally. It marked the beginning of a new context of grayer soil and what seems like more of these large flat slate stones. I think this is evidence of an old path. The stones are much larger than the pieces of slate we have found before, and are arranged in what could have been a path projecting from Hope College. It is important to note that we did not find these stones on the southern half of the trench, which does not line up with the Hope College stairs.

Unfortunately the setting sun forced us to stop excavation. This was a bummer because it was our last scheduled dig: our large stones lay covered with gray mud, all of us wanted to keep digging.

FINAL EXCAVATION: NOVEMBER 17

Saturday was our final day of excavation. Scheduled from 11 am to 4 pm this day was designed to put a definitive end to digging without the sun setting on us. I continued my work in Trench 2 on the Quiet Green. We had finished on Monday finding what seemed like large, arranged stones a couple feet below the surface. Exploring this further is definitely one of the reasons why I was looking forward to this supplemental dig on a Saturday morning/afternoon.

We dug around the large rocks we had found, eventually exposing a layer of large flat, horizontally arranged rocks which seemed to cap many medium sized stones that filled the space below them. This seemed like clear evidence of an old path. Judging by our excavation the path was constructed by a digging a shallow trench, filling it in with medium size rocks and then placing large flat stones to make the actual flat path.

I have been doing some research on the old path systems of the quiet green, and have found several photos that show paths extending straight out of the western door of Hope College through what is now our second trench. In this particular photo the path looks to be concrete. I found another photo, in which Hope College was gutted. The area behind the quiet green was stripped of all grass. Wooden beams lay around the lawn. This made me realize how likely many of our finds were from probably building projects, and how much the soil has been disrupted, whether through landscaping or construction since Hope College was built.

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