An archeological test unit goes through many stages, mainly the layers of excavation, however there is also the discovery of certain features that also contribute to the stages such as the discovery of a foundation. In this post I will discuss the evolution of a test unit that I and Romy excavated in the site behind Trent University.
The first step in a test unit’s life is plotting, that is to say using a string to plot/plan out what will be excavated. For mine and Romy’s unit it was placed on top of a possible base of a dwelling and as for the unit itself it is 2m x 2m see plotted unit below.
2×2 unit laid out on the ground
It is after the plotting that the first stages of excavation must begin, for this unit that involves the taking of the grass and plant roots of the topsoil, after this this first layer of excavation is to be done, for this particular unit layers were being dug in 10 cm intervals. During the excavation as artifacts are present in the soil it must be sifted and all artifacts are bagged. See below the unit stripped of plant material and after the first 10 cm layer excavation.
Vegetation cleared
10cm down
After this first layer is excavated a unit form that relays all the necessary information of this particular level is filled out. Now this same process of excavation, sifting and form writing was continued on in the 10-20 cm, 20-30 cm and 30-40 cm range. That being said, at around 20-30 cm a large collection of rocks could be viewed which may have been structural which is why the excavation happens around the collection of rocks until it is proven to or not to be a feature such as a structure in this case.
10-20cm
20-30cm
Start of 30-40cm
After the excavation to the 40 cm range it could be confirmed that the stony collection was most likely some debris but not structural. That being said, there was a piece of wood that could be planking revealed at this level. Due to time constraints the 2m x 2m unit became a 1m x 1m unit targeted on this possible planking. This unit was brought down to near 60 to 70 cm and revealed a large brick of concrete as well as a piece of wood which the concrete seems to rest on; these features are most likely structural. This however would be the end of this unit. It is here that the final mapping and documentation of the unit is taken and photos of it are taken, after all this recording is concluded the unit is backfilled with the extracted soil.
End of unit
Final photography
This being said the unit lives on through the artifacts retrieved from it see below artifacts from the 10-20 cm layer of mine and romy’s test unit. In this image the artifacts are displayed after the washing that they must go through before categorization.
Some of the artifacts recovered from 10-20cm.
All this shows the many stages of “life” that an excavation unit goes through as well as some of the things that they can reveal throughout their short lives.
I discovered this comb in our woodlot site BcGn-15 while doing historical feature characterization. On the 12th of May, I was in a group with Maddie, Cam, and Falon and we were essentially looking for archaeological remains that can be seen while walking around the site. While it was one of the hotter days, we were lucky enough to be in the shade of the trees.
The comb has the words “Pro-phy-lac-tic” in a cursive style as well as “nylon” and the number 130 all written on the handle. The location of the comb was near a bunch of other domestic garbage, such as old fanta cans, coke bottles, and wrappers, which must have been some kind of garbage dump.
When looking through these domestic artifacts, we learned that you would normally order them by different categories such as food and drink, clothing, and personal. The comb would fall under the personal category. When looking up Pro-phy-lac-tic, I found a brush company, which was established in Massachusetts in 1866 as “The Florence Manufacturing Company”. The company changed their name in 1924 to “Pro-phy-lac-tic Brush Company”, which mainly produced toothbrushes and was the largest manufacturer of them in the United States during 1924. Eventually in 1930 the company was bought by Lambert Pharmaceutical Co., which is now commonly known as Pfizer.
The comb is nylon and provides us with a terminus post quem date (or earliest date) of 1935 because that is when nylon was invented.
On May 12th, Avery, Maddy, Falon and I were assigned to survey the forested area of BcGn-15 and document artifact deposits with flagging tape and historical feature recording forms. As we walked through the forest, we discovered numerous artifacts scattered across the ground, such as cans, glass bottles, unrecognizable metal and much more. The most notable artifacts were the two abandoned vehicles, both fairly damaged from the vegetation and decaying.
One of these vehicles had a small metal plaque still attached to the front, which caught my attention immediately. Although the car was severely damaged and eroded, the inscription was still decipherable. This plaque reads, “Caution it is impossible to drain heater unit when draining remainder of cooling system – under freezing conditions bluecol antifreeze must be used”. During lunch, I was able to do some research on this plaque, and using a website called detailenthusiast.ca, I discovered that this plaque was associated with Smith heaters on British made cars.
It is clear that this forested area was utilized as an informal dumping ground; this is clear from the spread of the variety of artifacts. The presence of these cars raises numerous questions. Were they intentionally dumped here, or were they abandoned after their owners passed away? The deteriorating condition of both the cars indicates the passage of time and reveals that these vehicles have been sitting in this forest for a long period of time. These cars served as a reminder that archaeology can include relatively recent artifacts that still provide significant information about past human behaviour. The discovery of these vehicles added a very exciting aspect to our surveying of the forest and was the highlight of the field school.
Indigenous Peoples have a long and often forgotten history in Canada. These communities have been in this region since time in immemorial. They continue to pass down oral histories and Traditional Knowledge to this day. Archeology has helped uncover some of the material remains from these past periods in time.
On May 6th, 2025, the ground was wet from a night of rain which made somewhat ideal conditions to do a field walk as dust and other debris have been washed off any surface artifacts. Almost the entire field school participated in this activity. We walked about 100m south of BcGn-17 to a hill on a farmer’s field. With some prior knowledge of Indigenous settlement locations which included hills near water I suspected we might find something.
The class walked the length of the entire hill. Greg was to my left and Jacob was on my right, no one was finding anything but the occasional cool rock which we would pocket. At the end of the walk James and Kate showed the group a broken archaic period stone axe head found by another student during the fieldwalk which was likely broken and left on the ground for thousands of years. After getting a closer look I realized that it was very similar to one of the cool rocks I had in my pocket. After the class dispersed for lunch, I asked James and Kate if the rock I had could be something which they replied, “Where did you find that?”. It turned out to be an archaic period axe head which was estimated to be 3000-4000 years old.
Thomas showing where he found the axe head.
The edges of the stone have been ground to form the bit
This field school was really fun, highly motivating and we learned so much that’s really relevant to archeology, as a program and as a career. Specifically, I think the largest applicable things would be survey (and mapping), excavation and artifact processing. It has allowed me a far more in-depth understanding of topics simply because I’ve had this hands-on experience, instead of just relying on the theory of classes and research.
At our first site, BcGn-17, my group (the Rats) started learning survey first. James gave us a tutorial on how to use a theodolite, a tool that helps document findable points in relation to where the theodolite sits, and then set us loose (with help) on a practice field of flags that represent where artifacts had been found during a controlled surface pickup (a pedestrian survey where you walk in lines looking at the ground for artifacts). We used a stadia rod to track the flags, as they were too low for the theodolite to see on its own, and then once we had all of the coordinates in relation to our datum, and plotted out where we would put 1m by 1m test units if the practice site was real. We also used the stadia rod to document elevation in comparison to the theodolite, and compiled all of those (with some math and spreadsheets courtesy of the Arch Centre’s laptop’s LibreOffice – basically off brand excel spreadsheet haha) to make a map of the site on grid paper. It was really cool to see the finished product of that map because it gave a bird’s eye view of the field and a wider perspective on the project we had been working on!
Our theodolite, and the spray painted stake underneath is our datum, who we named Rat Boy 3.
After our round of survey, we were in charge of helping to excavate with the other groups while they took their turns doing their practice survey. At BcGn-17 the Rats mostly worked on OA2, which was working on revealing the beginning of a drainage system that had been discovered in earlier excavations. We were trying to uncover it so that we could learn more about its context, i.e. what was it there for, and there was proof that something was incorporated into it, which we determined to most likely be a root cellar (named The Eminence)! We cleared away the tarp left from a previous excavation and cleaned up the loose dirt on the drain feature a little, and then it was time to leave it to the people staying on site, and for us to begin a new site at BcGn-15! (Not technically new-new, as it has been excavated before, but new to us!)
The Mulch Pile on BcGn-17, where breaks and lunches were spent relaxing. Very comfy, also very full of bugs :).
BcGn-15 was really different from the first site, surrounded by forest and brush, which made for a very different digging experience. This was also impacted by the fact that while both sites had been investigated already, the test units on BcGn-15 were entirely fresh, whereas the ones on BcGn-17 had already been excavated and were a little looser. Zenya, Matie and I opened OA1 in BcGn-15, though Matie and Julie went off to excavate OA4, a midden that had a lot of really intact artifacts. Zenya and I discovered that OA1 (which we named Marie Antoinette on a particularly hot day when we felt silly) was also some kind of midden, a place where the people who lived there likely threw household junk. We found a ton of stuff on the first couple layers, then by the time we reached subsoil (30-35cm deep) we stopped finding artifacts and instead found a stain in the dirt that could be man made, and named it Feature 2! We cross sectioned the feature, which meant troweling away a pocket of the soil so that we could see and document the side profile of the feature. We did not find any artifacts or proof of structure inside it, just the difference of 2 soils. The discolouration of the feature was caused by the soils being different, where the feature was gravel, the rest of our unit was far more clayey, making the feature a gravel lens.
Zenya and I writing our daily logs in OA1. Marie Antoinette was a comfortable seat when we had dug this deep. (It’s also on the blog from May 15.)
Artifact processing takes place in the Archeology Centre, which is an awesome log cabin on East Bank. It’s super cute and the inside is incredibly cozy, which makes it great for the time spent inside, washing and sorting artifacts. There was a ton to get through, especially from BcGn-15, which had all the midden units filled with old household waste. Both tasks were super soothing in very different ways. Washing artifacts includes you, a buddy, a toothbrush, a sieve and a bucket of water. All you need to do is scrub the artifacts gently until they’re clean, set them in a labeled tray and leave them to dry, it’s the kind of mindless work that we could do with music and chatting going on as well. It was really fun to just chat with people interested in similar things with someone occasionally piping up about an especially cool artifact they just washed. Sorting artifacts includes taking the dried artifacts, sorting them into bags by material, logging how many there are in each bag and where they came from. It’s a quieter task, because people need to focus on counting, but it’s meditative and soothing.
Despite all these different things feeling so different, they all tied in together to show the kind of system that archeological dig sites tend to run on, and it was incredible to see and participate in it first hand. Everything I did, saw and learned during this course was super cool and the experience is one that I think will stick with me for a while. 🙂
