The 3rd day out in the field, March 25th, was exciting for both the morning and the afternoon groups! The morning group had their first day actually digging in the STPs and they were very excited to get their hands dirty. As for the afternoon group, some pretty spectacular finds were unearthed that caught everyone’s attention. Our efforts over the past few weeks are starting to pay dividends as we can now see notable progress. Most of the STPs are 1 to 2 feet deep at this point and a couple soil changes have been noted. These are consistent with the other STPs.
The morning group worked on some of the existing STPs in addition to opening up some new ones. Fallon and Marissa were one of the pairs that started fresh, they found that the soil layers changed noticeably, and worked all the way down to the fourth level! They uncovered artifacts from every category and noted that the consistency in which they found some of the artifacts, such as coal and clinker led them to question whether or not there was a building on the property at some point.
Continuing off of the morning group’s progress, the afternoon group went straight to work. We broke up into pairs and were each assigned to a hole, with one group rotating to help Dr. De Cunzo with the transit. This time we were measuring the distance between STPs, but nonetheless it was still very difficult and nearly impossible to get them to match up. It was definitely a rewarding experience however, bringing to light yet again how important it is to accurately map out our site.
Friday’s excavation yielded some pretty marvelous finds! Starting with Darcy and Rebecca who found a piece of feather-edged pottery, which was white with blue decoration. It is most likely from the mid-19th century! Excavated from the STP which I was working on was a tiny red toy plane! It is believed to be made of lead and most likely from the mid 1900s. The plane had the word Japan written on it very small letters. The first feature of the site was found by Kate and Colleen! This was recorded in multiple pictures. As they dug into the feature they found that deeper and deeper the feature turned into two smaller, separate holes. In one of them they found a ton of objects; coal, glass, ceramics, and sea shell.
I think it is easy to say that we had a pretty successful day! It was interesting to see the soil layers start to match up throughout the STPs, and the artifacts corresponding to the soil layers. I can’t wait to see what we’ll uncover next!