Month: May 2023

Abigail shares some of her experiences on the field school in this post. We did mangle quite a few worms this season, I am afraid! — Kate

As the past month of field school comes to a close, I cannot believe all we’ve done and learned within the month yet at the same time it feels as if it’s gone by in two seconds! It’s sad to think I won’t spend my mornings trying to bully as many people as I can into carpooling with me to BcGn-17. It’s been so cool to see as our site grew and theories changed (shoutout to the drain we thought was a wall for so long!) and watching it all get backfilled felt bittersweet.

During the last week on BcGn-17, I focused on exposing the drain structure in a 2×2 unit I had been working on for a while (E7037 N4932) which seemed to be a continuation of the drain we had been following but it had come to a sort of curve and spread outwards, which lead to me begging James to let us open up the unit directly beside to the west (E7035 N4932). I dug the southwestern corner down to about 90cm in E7037 to find the bottom of the drain and then we moved to all hands on deck in our last two days in trying to excavate E7035, which was quite impressive!

In the new 2×2 unit we found probably the highest artifact count of all of the units excavated and found multiple nearly whole bricks smushed between the stone structure as well as some metal which Kate believes was a bucket. As we continued down to 30cm, we discovered by the hidden tarp that the southwest corner of the unit had been previously excavated in 2009 in a 1×1 unit, meaning they couldn’t tell there was an actual structure and tragically removed all the rocks! Very unfortunate that it was our last day as we couldn’t excavate surrounding units to uncover how the structure continues, but I look forward to following this blog to see future discoveries!

Despite the football shaped (and sized) sunburn on my back, many bug bites, and dirt I will never remove from my car seats, I will never ever forget this experience and the people that I met. Everyone was so beyond kind, and I hope to see you all in the future in some capacity! Thank you thank you thank you 😊

DISCLAIMER: Quite a few worms were harmed in the excavation of this site. Sorry worms.

— Abigail Davies

Here are some of Stephanie’s musings from the field school experience! — Kate

Being in the middle of a farmers field for nearly a month does some things to the mind; the sun, repetitive tasks and the muggy warmth does slowly cook the brain into a groggy stew.

Excitement of meeting a variety of new people and the discoveries of artifacts throughout the time spent at BcGn-17 has made the daily creation of brain soup a little more digestible.

Gathering information through the ploughed fields via pedestrian survey gave a significant insight into what type of artifacts would likely be found while doing a stage 3 excavation.

Intense amounts of ceramic fragments in a majority of the units opened within BcGn-17.

Not sure I have ever seen a drainage system like this in Canada, but I have only lived through the 2000s and unfortunately never experienced life in the mid-late 1800s.

Ground penetrating radars done prior to this season’s field school had revealed a wall-like anomaly running from east to west along the more northern end of BcGn-17.

Excavation of ten plus units showed that the possible wall previously seen with GPR, had actually been a drainage system either for the past farmhouse or for the field itself.

Revelations such as; the new information gathered on artifact densities (both surface and those found in the sediment), the spread of artifact distributions and the types of artifacts found, the drainage system, and the possibility of newly found features upon the sterile subsoil, although relatively low in comparison to past field schools have answered some of the questions that James and Kate held at the beginning of the 2023 field school season.

Like what the anomaly seen with GPR may have been, or where the previous inhabitants may have placed their home.

Yearning for more answers to what the full layout of this farm property would have been during occupation, James and Kate will likely continue excavation of the site BcGn-17 in the next few semesters that ANTH-3000Y will be taught.

— Stephanie Chaisson

Caleb shares some of the road that led him to joining the field school this season. — Kate

Oh man, where do I begin to explain the time I had with this field school. I suppose to get a proper grasp on my feelings I’ll need to explain some contextual information about my situation prior to the field school. To say I have had quite the academic journey thus far would be an understatement. In adopting the old adage and envisioning the journey like a rollercoaster, since my first year, there have been a plethora of ups, downs, climbs, falls, loops and inversions, with the climb to the first drop being the year 2019.

I am thankful for the fact that my first year took place during the final year before Peterborough was affected by the Covid pandemic. Having one year of normal university, I feel was critical in consolidating my dedication to archaeology as my program. I fear without it I might have given up in face of the trials and tribulations that was online schooling. Indeed, as I’m sure most will agree, learning such a physical discipline via online means is not optimum. So much so, that there was a time at the end of my second year, during the height of the pandemic that my academic conviction nearly crumbled. It was only the prospect of hybrid learning and the partial return to the classroom in my third year which kept me going.

While my third year was certainly an improvement in terms of hands-on learning, I did find that socially connecting to my peers was difficult. This was probably due to the fact that we were all still essentially strangers to each other, previously only having one proper year to meet in person prior to sharing third year classrooms.

Fortunately, the end of my third year also marked the end of my lowest time at university. In fourth year I began to make connections with professors, explore more in depth material on archaeology, and find kinship with my peers. And capping off this triumphant climb on the Trent academic coaster was my participation in the 2023 Ontario field school. Indeed, in many ways it was everything I could have asked for from a field school.

From the faculty running as supervisors, to the plethora of bright faces who arrived everyday and traded their masks for high viz vests and shovels, I could not have asked for better company on site. In addition to all of this, I was excited to share the field with fellow indigenous band members, who share an interest in cultural material, as indigenous led archaeology is the path I’ve decided to tread this was a wonderful sight to see.

To be entirely honest, I have to revert to the nit-picking method of analysis to even find fault with the field school. The one issue I can think of is that it was quite short. Maybe it just came down to my perception of time or the factor that physical work makes time fly, but I felt that we only began to scratch the surface of the potential inherent to the field opportunity. Maybe in the future, a lab aspect can be incorporated either in betwixt time on site, to pad out the duration of the course.

All in all I am more than happy with my time this month, I’ve gained experience on the extracurricular skills used on site, like grid mapping, documentation, and feature planning. I’ve gained some great friendships as well, which is more than I could ever ask for.

–Caleb Johnson

Here’s Erik’s take on his field school experience. I have really enjoyed reading these student reflections about their experiences. — Kate

Unfortunately, my time participating in this year’s Trent Archaeological Field School has come to an end. Over these past weeks I have had the pleasure of learning and working alongside my peers under the guidance of Kate, James, Michael, and Dan on a project that provided consistent engagement and reward. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in the excavation of several different units across multiple sites, partake in the re-rediscovery of a well at BcGn-17, gain practice in a mapping exercise using a theodolite, and briefly begin cleaning some of the artefacts uncovered by the crew, amongst other activities, an overall well rounded experience. The following is essentially a step-by-step account of my experience participating in the 2023 Field School.

After completing our first day of the field school, in which we were briefed on the background of the Nassau Mills region and specifically site BcGn-17, I was given the privilege of joining Teika in beginning a search for re-rediscovering the well on this site; a day later we were joined by Fraser. For a first assignment it was a rather daunting task, but fortunately for me Teika has plenty of CRM experience and helped me with the more technical components of excavating, such as the squaring of walls, and tips on efficient trowelling (both of which I still need to improve at, but am a lot better at due to Teika’s help.)

After completing our excavating work at the well, I was reassigned to complete a mapping exercise which James had set up to give us practical experience using a theodolite and translating the data to a technical map. Working again with Fraser, and joined by Kyla and Janet, we were required to find the GPS coordinates of each artefact flag laid out by James and then establish the locations for one by one metre units at five metre intervals. For mapping half of the artefacts, we used tape measurers to calculate their location relative to the datum, and for the other half we used the theodolite. After gathering their locations, we drew up a map and plotted their locations (as I do not have a photo or copy of the map, Fraser’s blog post “The Art of Mapping” does feature a rough version of it.)

Within the following days, I was assigned to complete a one by one metre unit examination under the supervision of Michael. Working with Sebastian, we rather quickly were able to reach subsoil and complete our unit – I believe it was at this site that I uncovered my first artifact, which was a small white ware porcelain sherd ( which I do not have a picture of). After completing a unit form and profile plan, we closed the unit and returned to the main site.

For the next several days, I worked on a two by two metre unit at the south east end of the primary excavation area. This unit took up approximately a week of my time at the field school, as it was taken down from about ten centimetres to forty, being mapped and profiled at twenty and thirty centimetres, and pictured at forty. Undoubtedly the twenty to thirty centimetre layer provided the most artifacts, including two large blue transfer print porcelain ceramic sherds (which I do not have pictures of). For this stage of the unit, I worked with Alyssa and Cierra, who told me about a unique set of archaeological t-shirts featuring their favourite and least favourite aspects of archaeological fieldwork (for example, “artifacts” = good; “bugs” = bad.)

After this unit was closed, I was sent to a new site, BcGn-28, directed by Michael, which is where I would end up concluding my time at this field school. At this site, I was again working with Cierra on excavating a one by one metre unit adjacent to where a large quantity of pre-contact artifacts had been located. This unit turned out to provide plenty of related artifacts – mainly earthenware ceramics and faunal remains, but also two lithic points and a metallic pin/fish hook. But while the topsoil provided many artifacts, the unit’s subsoil did not; instead, the most notable aspect of the unit was a potential feature in the unit’s south-east corner, which is most likely a posthole.

Now, as I conclude my account of participating in the 2023 Trent Archaeological Field School, I would once again like to thank the course’s instructors for their guidance and help in making this field school incredibly enjoyable and helpful. Additionally to my peers, many of whom I have gotten to know much better than previously before, for being a phenomenal crew to work alongside of. Besides for an unfortunate encounter with BcGn-28’s resident poison ivy, there is little I have to say about this field school not living up to my expectations of what I had hoped to learn and experience.

–Erik Wright