Megan Gallik
When the Rats and the Earthworms made their way to the site in the bush, I requested that the Raccoons remain at the site in the ploughed field to finish up the site. As exciting as it is to start excavating at a new site, I wanted to be a part of our first site as long as possible. I had grown an emotional attachment; it seems and who would want to leave the mulch pile?
The Raccoons split into 3 subgroups: Nicolas, Jacob and Thomas; Suyang, Kyra, and Breanna; Sam, Emma, Syd and me. Nicolas, Jacob and Thomas finished cross-sectioning the well and created a profile map of the feature. Suyang, Kyra, and Breanna cleaned up the midden unit, finishing with a plan and profile map of the unit and stratigraphy. Lastly, Sam, Emma, Syd and I started with the cross section of the rock feature.
Finishing up a site entails doing more precise investigating of features of interest; in this situation, it was the rock feature that went diagonally through the unit. We had the goal to find the cut in the soil where the previous residents had dug a ditch and placed all these rocks in it. Our investigative approach was to do a cross-section of the rock feature, We do a cross-section and not a full excavation because there is no current threat of destruction of the site, and we always assume that technology will improve over time, so we leave some of the feature for archaeologists in the future with their fancy new equipment that can tell them more than we could induce today.
The first day with only Raccoons on site, we made a lot of progress. Nicolas, Jacob and Thomas finalized the well cross-section and drew the profile map, and then they jumped (not actually because that’s not safe) into the rock feature unit to help me bring the floor down while Syd, Emma and Sam drew the well profile. Suyang, Kyra, and Breanna finished cleaning up the midden unit and created both the plan and profile of their unit. Sam, Emma, Syd and I got to a pretty good depth in the unit. The rocks, bricks, mortar and nails were never-ending. We would pull up a big rock that we thought might be the bottom of the cut, and then there would be a full brick underneath.
With the two other units being complete on this site, those working on them headed to the new site in the bush, while Sam, Emma, Syd, and I remained with Hayley and Lorna occasionally.
We also discovered that it was a lie that James hates music; he said that Kate hates music, but turns out neither of them hates music, they just want to make sure we’re all happy and able to hear James’ quiet voice. With this new discovery, I put on some country bangers to get some momentum in the unit with the boys. When the two other subgroups of the Raccoons went to the site in the bush, our little group enjoyed a chill indie mix and Epic the Musical in order. There is nothing better than being in a hole in the dirt while listening to Hozier screams or singing along to an entire musical and debating which character was in the wrong. There was an abundance of nails, brick and mortar in this cross section, but there were some cooler artifacts that were found alongside them. Hayley uncovered a metal dinner spoon. Emma is always excited to find more bones and identify where in the body they came from and who they came from (pig, cow, other?). Syd was our godsend and was deadlifting huge rocks and huge buckets of dirt, I’m forever grateful.
While we were trying to dig to the other side of the world, or what seemed like it, we hit the water table. We were starting to find air pockets in our unit, there were voids under rocks that were more than a meter underground. It seems that this was caused by the water table being lower and leaving a gap between the rock and water.
Since the water table makes the dirt so muddy and difficult to see artifacts, we couldn’t dig deeper, but we brought the whole cross section down to the water table. We slowly started losing standing room, so we were doing some gymnastics moves to stay above the water and excavate.
Once there was no more dry standing space, Hayley was in the mud in her waterproof work boots, and I wore James’ giant rubber work boots so we could clean up the wall for easy profiling.
On our last day on this site, we just did profile mapping of the wall of the cross section. Lorna climbed into the unit and gave us all the points we needed on our map. This process took much longer than I thought it would. For the profile, you need to be precise and mark exactly where each rock or large artifact is. The maps turned out pretty accurate, and the time it took to get them to look that way was necessary for this outcome. I find the profile mapping system more accurate because with the drawing grids we use for plan maps, it’s easy to mess up the perspective and have it look wonky. The profile took more time, but I would do it again.
