Category: I-Spy

Yesterday the main excavations continued at the Stage 3 site. This is where the students get to see a different kind of archaeology, where the goal is to determine the extent and character of a previously identified site.

In a Stage 3, we are excavating 1m x 1m units 5cm into subsoil, and collecting any artifacts we find. If we happen to encounter a feature (usually some evidence of human activity like a circular soil stain, rocks arranged in a linear fashion suggesting architecture, etc.) the excavation stops and it gets recorded for a future Stage 4 excavation. I enjoy Stage 3s because they are so standard and formulaic, but I can see at the start how the students were wondering what is the point and if their walls really needed to be vertical and straight.

The thing I don’t like about Stage 3s is that you really have no idea about what is going on at a site at finer levels of interpretation. We are essentially punching standard size holes in a grid over the site extent, and collecting any artifacts. Because we are digging in arbitrary layers, we don’t get the same vertical control of artifact positioning as we would in a context-based excavation, but again, the goal of this type of excavation is to sample the site in a standardized collection method.

It is definitely a different kind of archaeology than our Structure 1 excavations, and it is a good experience for our students, especially if they are thinking about joining a consulting archaeology firm for the summer after they finish the field school.

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Today we are distributed across campus, some people are working on the Stage 3 site with James, August and Sophie are finishing up their excavations at Structure 1, and I am helming the lab crew doing primary processing of the artifact backlogs, and then we will strike a backfill crew of volunteers to get Structure 1 put back to bed for now.

It was so busy I didn’t have time to take any pictures, but we managed to catch up so that everything recovered has now been washed, the previously washed material has been bagged and counted is now ready for secondary analysis, and so we will be ready in the event of more rain.

Four days left after today!

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Finally, here are the answers to the I-Spy from the other day:

Hello hello! While the field school part with the students is now over, there is still a lot of work to be done. We need to finish cataloguing and then we need to photograph representative artifacts and write the report.

But it won’t end there, as students this fall in Dr Marit Munson’s Advanced Lab Methods course will be developing original research based on this material. I’ll post updates on this process as I am sure it will be fascinating!

Eventually we would like to publish a book on our work exploring sites related to Nassau Mills.

Here are the answers to the mega-I-Spy!

A little bit chillier today than it has been all week! I thought I was going to have to start doing laps around the site (I am sure that would have been supremely amusing to our crew), but we persevered and made some good progress today before we break for the weekend. Here are a few snaps from our day:

We didn’t pick an official Artifact of the Day, but there was part of a green-glazed ceramic high voltage threaded pole insulator buried beside the basement entrance. Funnily enough, just as we were identifying it, Jolyane’s crew had found a small ceramic piece from across the field that could have been from the same object! It was really serendipitous, and funny, as James walked over with Jolyane and said “Hey, do you know what this is?” and I turned around and said “Yes, it is what Anthony is holding right there!”.

This insulator probably dates to post 1901 when Canadian General Electric was leasing and then later purchased the property for generating stations to send power downtown to their main manufacturing plant on Park Street!

Leading into the weekend, here are the answers to yesterday’s I-Spy game:

 

We decided to swap lab day to today as it looked like rain for most of the day and tomorrow is supposed to be clear. Our first order of business was to start washing the masses of material we have been recovering from our excavations. The targets that Jolyane is investigating with her crew are providing a lot of domestic material, which suggests they are in close proximity to one of the other houses we are looking for.

We hadn’t found much yet in the Old Plaster House this year, but yesterday Mary and Sarah were digging in part of the midden, and Danny, Stephanie and Collette were digging at the face of the south wall where we know there were lots of artifacts last year, so we have started accumulating material.

We divided up half the group to wash, and half to catalogue. The purpose of cataloguing is to sort and organize the artifacts in a way that we can use them to tell us interesting information about a site. While you have seen us focus on certain artifacts and what they can tell us individually, we also look at the artifacts as a collective. When we have 12000+ artifacts, there is no way for us make sense of them unless we organise them into categories.

These categories are relatively arbitrary, and there isn’t only one way to catalogue things. Our system has been refined and modified over the years depending on the kinds of site we excavate. It is important to have a system that works with the kinds of artifacts you are finding, and it also needs to be flexible.

The first thing is to note the context and number of the thing we are cataloguing. This forms a unique identifier that we can use to trace and relocate the artifact when it is packed away in boxes. Next, we need to describe the material class of the object. So for our site, we are using these categories:

• Glass
• Ferrous
• Metal
• Ceramic
• Brick
• Plaster
• Stone
• Bone
• Coal/Slag
• Other

Depending on the type of site, we might have more categories, or in the case of ancient Indigenous sites, we might only have the categories of: Bone, Shell, Lithics (Stone), and Ceramic!

The next important decision when cataloguing an artifact is the material class. This is a category based on the function of the item. It allows us to group items of different materials into behaviour functions. So, for example, we have a class called Architectural, which is everything relating to the structure of a house. So within the larger category, we can group different materials in sub-categories like so, and further divide them into objects:

• Class: Architectural
  • Material: Glass
    • Object: Window Glass
  • Material: Ferrous
    • Object: Nails
    • Object: Door hardware
  • Material: Brick
    • Object: Frogged brick
    • Object: Chimney brick
  • Material: Mortar

Another important class for us is related to Food and Beverage. This catch-all bin collects all the various types of artifacts relating to the cooking, storing, and serving of food. Within Food and Beverage, we can catalogue things like ceramic tableware, metal flatware, stoneware crocks, kitchenware like mixing bowls, along with things like metal cans and glass bottles and jars that contained food.

In particular, the glass and ceramic items are going to be our best date indicators for the site.

It is kind of a fun exercise to hold something in your hand and try and catalogue it. Today, I had some students who found it hard to make a decision about what category to put something in…the main thing is there is no real right answer, the secret is being consistent with the rules that you are using to classify stuff. I think it’s fun, but I agree its not everyone’s cup of tea: (Ceramic > Food and Beverage > Tableware)!

I have a couple I-Spy images today — we didn’t get through all of the material with some of the really fun objects, but here are some things for you to look for:

Tomorrow is Day Nine of the field school, and we are back out on site to see what we can get done before the weekend!

 

Things are starting to wind down on site. The students have mostly finished their assessment units and we are focusing on tidying up the open exavations on the structure. The fourth-year students have finished their excavation in the second operation area.

Although we didn’t have any rain, there was a constant steady wind which meant we felt a bit flayed by the end of the day!

Here are the answers to last Thursday’s I-Spy:

Tomorrow we are in the lab, there’s a lot of cataloguing and artifact processing to be done!