Oct. 1st

After two weeks of research and finally deciding on a site - the quiet green - the archaeology of college hill crew was ready to get down and dirty...well kind of. These past two weeks have been an immersion into the logistics of not only historical archaeology but also archaeological practice, and this week's topic: survey archaeology. Sure, I had heard of surveying before (Wasn't George Washington a surveyor?). I knew it was more passive than excavating and involved a lot of looking. It's a form of mapping the landscape. I had always assumed, archaeologically, it was just a precursor to excavation. I had the "Let's see what's on the ground and make sure nothing too important is there before we get to the good stuff" mentality. Boy was I wrong...

Even though we were going to be excavating only a small fraction of the area, it was important for us to survey the entire surrounding area; in this case, the quiet green. Why? It's helpful to place whatever we are doing into context. How does our excavation site compare, contrast, and speak with the surrounding landscape? Since we will be treating all layers of our site, it's important to also note the state and condition it is in now.

So, what did we do? First we looked at a Survey Unit Form, the document we would be using to record our findings. Each transect, or walk across our unit, would require a new unit form, to be filled out by the leader. It was the leaders responsibility to map the area not only with existing structures, but where the surveyors were walking and to record other data such as visibility and soil type. The surveyors themselves were responsible for walking their transect, in this case east-west or west-east and looking for finds on the ground. It was our jobs to both stay evenly distanced from our other surveyor and to keep a count of the objects we saw. For our survey, our artifact categories included things such as plastic trash, metal, and glass, as we thought they would be the most prevalent.

One thing I didn't expect was how methodical a process surveying was. We divided the quiet green into units of 30m. Each surveyor, a total of 6, were to be spaced 5m apart. To attain accuracy we even did a little practice to make sure we knew how many paces equated to 5 meters (for me it was 6). Afterwards, we started in one corner, which was mapped by a GPS, and used compasses to walk due north, a surveyor stopping every 5m. On the leaders call we would process forward at a slow pace looking for objects in our line of vision (and only 1m for our right and left). After finishing the transect we would start the process over again, mapping the next GPS point for our unit and processing the other direction. Because our landscape was not perfectly rectangular we were able to survey the nooks and crannies that were present in our space. I was able to be the leader for one unit and I definitely appreciated both aspects of the process. I liked seeing the larger landscape picture and realizing what people found but also enjoyed the act of looking finely at the ground to see what was unbeknowingly (or purposefully) left behind.

After finishing our units we decided to do a more in depth survey near one of the proposed trenches. As I iterated previously, this study would give us a greater chance to place our work into context and examine what we are doing in different spheres of time. Finally, as the class concluded we convened with the group of students working with the Total Station technique and explained our work for the day.

In all, I found surveying to be both a surprisingly personal and group process. Each of us were able to engage with the landscape in a minute way but also see some of the larger picture. We had to work together to ensure accuracy and were all intimately engaged. I certainly left they day with a deeper understanding of what survey archaeology is and how it is practiced in the field.