Hello everyone, after the scorching temperatures of yesterday, we had decided on a mostly indoors day to catch up on the artifact backlog in washing, primary processing, and continuing analysis. Unfortunately due to construction near the Arch Centre, the water had to be turned off so it wasn’t possible to work there today. So some people came up to the teaching lab with me to work on artifact processing, and some who still needed to do a plan and/or a profile for their portfolio went out to site with James in another blazing hot day.
Since I don’t have anything really to share on my end, I have posted the first of many student blog posts, which will continue posting daily after the field school ends on Friday. There is no required format, just that they focus on some aspect related to the field school with you! I hope those reading this will follow along and enjoy what our students have to share with you.
Kaitlyn Ross
Working on BcGn-15 OA8, we have some REALLY interesting and complex topography, which we have denoted as the destruction layer, that occurred from the bulldozing that happened in this area in the 1960’s when Trent University purchased the land. We’ve dug around and removed as many of the large boulders as we can, and thanks to David, we’ve even removed the large slab of concrete that crossed over the “void”. Mapping this was quite tedious but with some patience and hard work it was done. To get the specific information for our OA we used a theodolite and a total station to get the coordinates and the levels of our unit, which I find really cool.
We’ve had some really interesting finds in our unit, from a gold ring to bones, to nails, to glass and ceramics and much more. Being in Bioanthropology I am a big fan of bones and love attempting to identify them. Of those we’ve found in our unit we’ve determined that most of them are Pig bones. We’ve found Pig ulna, humerus, ribs, vertebra and some other element that has yet to be identified. We’ve also found a partial mandible of a small rodent and a metapodial of what I assume is from a raccoon.
We’ve also had some fun and not so fun, for some of us, visitors in our unit. I had a small mouse scurry across my foot and hide in a hole of our north wall, we’ve had a colony of large spiders move into the area we call the “void” and a snake slither along the edge of our south wall. Those were the first visitors, which were the scariest for a good portion of our group. The next visitors were a little toad and a fluffy little caterpillar, which we gently removed and set free in a safer place away from all the sharp tools.
I have a special mention for the various poses and outfits that occur while out in the field digging. I specifically find it much more efficient, comfortable and fun to get my legs out of the way when digging, and to expose my knees when it gets hot.
