A prized experience

Tony Mohan

Since I was a small boy growing up I always had an interest in ancient history and finding new things by just digging in the soil. My interest in Archaeology really sparked when I started watching the documentary series that National Geographic offered on TV, which included the Egyptian ruins in Giza, Alexandria and Saqqara. 

Thanks to James and Kate who are not just kind people, but are excellent professors. They gave me an opportunity to be part of this field study at Trent in the Nassau Mills area BcGn-15, OA8. I am in my third year of Archeology at Trent and it has been exciting learning experience when it comes to stratigraphy, the dig site, and the Theodolite and Total Station for measuring vertical/horizontal angles, distances and coordinates.

The highlight would be with the cleaning/sorting and categorizing all the artifacts that we excavated on the site. I constantly referred to the Archeological field manual and the Artifact reference guide that was compiled by James and Kate to confirm the type of nails, glassware, ceramic or metal can, to name a few.

Out in the field we came across two good finds, a 10k mens gold ring with a garnet center piece, and a plastic red cracker jack prize probably from the 1950s, a Chief sending smoke signals stand-up figure.

The weather was outstanding during the four week period. It was pretty good with a nice moderate warm heat with an occasional shower.

Thanks to the other five members of team “Bear”, David, Kaitlyn, Makayla, Carly and Hazel that contributed to the success of the excavation.