Another lab day, and a Thursday I-Spy!

We have come to the end of three weeks of the field school, halfway done already. I don’t know about anyone else, but the time seems to have flown by!

With Victoria Day weekend upon us, Professor Conolly decided to give the crew Friday off so they could enjoy an extra long weekend. While they are off enjoying themselves, this gives us some time to regroup and figure out what needs to happen in the last half of the course. As a result, we decided to have a lab day today instead of Friday and try and get caught up on artifact processing.

We had another visit by Marketing and Communications today. As they got to see what we do in the field, we invited them to see the lab work as well. I don’t claim to speak for them, but I think they found it very interesting and illuminating to shadow our progress.

Nic, Emily, Raine, Brianne, Jacob (behind Faisal) and Faisal are separating the washed artifacts by type of material, labelling each bag with the site name and context number.
Nic, Emily, Raine, Brianne, Jacob (behind Faisal) and Faisal are separating the washed artifacts by type of material, labelling each bag with the site name and context number.

Today in lab was more artifact washing, and bagging by material type, being exceedingly careful to make sure material excavated from the same context stays together. You can spend ages painstakingly excavating a site and have it all come crashing down if you don’t take care to keep the integrity of the material intact. Mixing artifacts across contexts means the interpretive potential they can give you is almost worthless.

Don, Bjorn, Kendra, Shannon, and Marielle are busy washing artifacts.
Don, Bjorn, Kendra, Shannon, and Marielle are busy washing artifacts.

In a site like ours, where there has been so much mixture and disturbance over a long time period, clues as to the location of certain types or ages of material is going to be crucial in giving us an interpretive backbone for the site.

Trevor spent some time designing a database to record the context information of the different parts of site we have been excavating. Each time we excavate a portion of the site, it is transformed into a paper record. From there, we transfer the information from paper to a digital format. Sam also started digitising aerial photos of the site and area around the site to create a site map.

Trevor, Sam, and Dr Conolly are working on GIS, mapping, and database tasks for the site.
Trevor, Sam, and Professor Conolly are working on GIS, mapping, and database tasks for the site.

Selena began photographing representative samples of the artifacts to include in the reports we need to submit to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Sport. At this point we have managed to wash all the material excavated to date, and most of it has been bagged by context. The next task is to start looking at the different material types and cataloguing the artifacts we have recovered.

Here is some I-Spy to head into the long weekend!

Tray one, can you find: 1. A spinner for a fishing lure; 2. A key; 3. A "mineral knob" doorknob, 4. A spring; 5. Part of a leather shoe.
Tray one, can you find: 1. A spinner for a fishing lure; 2. A key; 3. A “mineral knob” doorknob, 4. A spring; 5. Part of a leather shoe.
Tray two, can you find: 1. A surface-mount lock; 2. A teapot lid; 3. A big and a little glass stopper; 4. A piece of Blue Willow plate; 5. A bullet casing; 6. One of the only pieces of burned glass we have found.
Tray two, can you find: 1. A surface-mount lock; 2. A teapot lid; 3. A big and a little glass stopper; 4. A piece of Blue Willow plate; 5. A bullet casing; 6. One of the only pieces of burned glass we have found.
Tray three, can you find: 1. The stem of a briar pipe; 2. The lid to a porcelain doll set; 3. Two bullet casings; 4. A clay pipe stem; 5. A brooch; 6. A piece of pottery decorated by stamping.
Tray three, can you find: 1. The stem of a briar pipe; 2. The lid to a porcelain doll set; 3. Two bullet casings; 4. A clay pipe stem; 5. A brooch; 6. A piece of pottery decorated by stamping.

Check back tomorrow for a posting about an interesting artifact I discovered in lab today.

 

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