Bradley Navaranjan
After three days of learning the Guidelines and Standards of Archaeological surveying and excavating from Prof. Conolly and Kate we have begun preliminary surveying of the 2017, house settlement BcGn-23. The history of the landscape was vital in understanding what cultural material we would find versus what had been thrown away. One group accompanied Prof. Conolly to give UTM coordinates for a possible second site next to the housing settlement site already in preliminary surveying which Kira, Alexandra and I were a part of. While Kate and Ana (one of Prof. Conolly’s graduate students) aided students with digging trenches. I especially find Ana’s experience with screening dirt helpful when showing professionalism to CRM contractors.
Excavating the housing settlement was H hot, because tracing smaller squares within the big square, then shoveling the topsoil and screening the soil worked up a sweat. However, Alexandra, Kira and I focused on our strengths and helped each other with our weaknesses; Screening took a lot of endurance and arm strength. I handled the role and when the buckets got too heavy, I moved them. Kira and Alexandra with hand eye coordination were able to maintain a perfect unit without disturbing too much soil, preventing damage to the site. Our objective was to locate the stone wall of the house previously trading owners from Perry to Hughson. Prof. Conolly explained how the changing in landscape reveals the behavior of people at the time. What makes the A in aggravating is digging compacted dirt.
The team and I, once believed we found the stonewall, but it ended up being compacted dirt. After shoveling forty-seven cm deep and extending our pit by 50 cm we found a reference point from the 2017 excavation team and a cobblestone corner of the wall. The strange observation was the stone was square instead of an oval shape Kate showed us on the plans. We also found several nails and an Edgeware plate with the help of Kate’s experience in identifying ceramics such plates, cups and glass bottles helped my team with dating the embossed plate as manuafactured between 1820-1830. Even Ana helped with screening and shoveling techniques such as straightening the wrist and emptying rocks with long strokes, made me feel less aggravated on finding little in our test pit. Finally, the T at the end of the day was tiring.
Teamwork, troweling are all teachable moments for a full day of field school to leave on tired. However, this exhaustion comes from the sense of accomplishment that Kira, Alexandra and I have completed our first pit, first log entry and first lesson about how to conduct a preliminary survey on the Nassau Mills project.
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