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