More artifact washing

The last day of field school was just spent washing artifacts.  Since we were cleaning the finds from our own pits, we didn't find anything new and exciting.  It's a very important part of the process, but it's not really something worth waxing lyric about on a blog.


So that concludes my field school blog.  I hope it wasn't too boring and jargon-laden.

Last Dig Day

We knew this was going to be our last day out in the field, so we needed to get everything as complete as possible for the season.  Unfortunately, it was also kinda drizzly.

Since we were worried about the drizzle turning into full-blown rain at any moment, we worked with the tarp half-covering the units.  Unfortunately, this made it quite hot and muggy especially when the sun started to come out more.

Chris finished up level 5 in the SE quad since he digs faster and we wanted to get this done.  Sam finished removing the wall between our pit and his (EU 18).  I was carrying the buckets from the units to the screens.

Once Sam finished removing the wall, I got into the unit to start working from the other side.  Chris was still working on the SE quad, but we needed to get the NW and SW quads finished as well.  I started working on the NW quad.  It had a lot of annoying roots.  Chris and I were able to finish level 5 completely by attacking the last two quads from different sides.  All in all, level 5 barely produced anything that got bagged and was essentially a sterile level.  Then Chris and I got back out.  Emily and Sammy started to remove the 2 corner-balks along the south wall.  Chris sifted for Emily, and I helped push the annoying clay through the sifter.  Sam drew each wall of the now-continuous pit so the complete stratigraphy could be recorded.  Emily and Sammy got through the dark clay layer (which was considered the end of level 2 in my unit) on both corner-balks.

Then we had to leave our lovely, unified pit. :(

We spent the afternoon washing the artifacts from our units.  It was just standard artifact washing stuff.  We did have a little pizza party though to celebrate the end of our dig.

Digging again!

Chris had gotten through level 4 in the NE and SE quads the day before.  There really wasn't much of anything in them.

So we got the NW and SW quads down to 24in. as well.  Barely anything came out.

By this time, Dru had gotten down to about 39in., so our attempt to match his depth had been thwarted.  So we started Level 5 to get down to match him again.  You would think that a 15in. level would be hard to dig through, but it wasn't.  It was a very soft and loose sand with occasional clumps of a thick pink material.  Basically, you just have to lift out the pink clumps and then you can remove about an inch's worth of sand at a time with one trowel sweep.  So it was actually faster to dig than level 2 (which was only 3in. of a thick clay).

 Chris working on Level 5 while Dru takes out the wall.

Chris completely finished Level 5 in the NE quad.  I got about 5in. down on the SE quad before we had to pack up for the day.  I would have gotten significantly deeper, but a lot of roots started cropping up.  When you clear off sand that quickly, the roots basically have to be chopped after every single time you use the trowel.

After the wall was completely removed, we found a little alien-face soil stain.  Isn't he cute?

Level 5 had lots of buckets when absolutely nothing got caught by the sifter.  Only around 10 very tiny objects came out of the NE quad, and none were found in the SE yet.

Slightly more successfull flint-knapping

We tried flint-knapping again.  This time we had better tools and a more helpful youtube video.  So I managed to make 8 more good scrapers.  Emily actually made a point, although she didn't get it very sharp because it probably would have broken horribly.  I personally preferred using antler for the fine shaping rather than the copper piece.  The copper only seemed to make the rock shiny, and just didn't feel like it delivered as precise of a blow.

While we were flint-knapping, Dr. Knauth came by to do teacher evaluations.  They're a required thing for every class to see what changes should be made in curricula and such.

We flint-knapped a bit more until lunch.  After that I went back to my room to catalog some more artifacts.

Adventures in Flint-Knapping

The weather was, again, supposed to be abysmal.  So we stayed indoors to try a hand at flint-knapping.

It turns out that trying to teach yourself how to flint-knapp with some poor quality chert and rocks you found at a swimming hole based on youtube videos is actually quite challenging.  Some of our chert turned out to just be limestone, and some of the rocks we were using as hammer-stones were softer that chert and so ended up breaking far more than than the rocks we were using them on.  I managed to make one decent scraper, but all of the points I tried to shape kept breaking off large pieces of the tip area.

 Flint-knapping really isn't easy.

After a few hours of this, Dr. Knauth called Robin because she was at Glunk and wanted to see how our dig was going and was wondering where we were.  Then Dr. Knauth came back to the college to check on our class.  It turns out there was a stash of flint-knapping tools in the main Archaeology lab, which Robin does not have access to.  

At that point, it was clear that the weather report had been a lie, and it was actually a lovely day to dig.  So we went out, including Dr. Knauth, to Glunk to get some work done.

Dr. Knauth observing excavations.

We didn't find much of anything in our unit.  There were a few bits of rock, but that was basically it.  We finished up level 3 for the whole unit.  We also determined that our level 4 should be from 21-24in, so we could be level with Dru's unit instead of leaving an awkward lip where the wall was being removed.  We barely got started on that in the NE quad before leaving for the day.

 Chris and Dru tried very hard to keep bits of the wall from collapsing chunks into our unit.

Notebook Catch-up Day

It was scheduled to be rainy and gross on this Friday.  That turned out to be a bunch of lies, but we didn't realize that until well into the day, so we ended up staying inside and doing paperwork.

We spent the first hour or two making sure everyone had notes for every day in their field notebooks.  Then we wrapped up the New Berlin stuff by cataloging all of the remaining artifacts.  STP 2 produced entirely too many rocks, so this process was way more annoying and time-consuming than it needed to be.

So that took all day.

Late Start Day

We didn't start head out to the site until 12 on this day.  Part of that was because there was rain in the morning.  Another part was that some members of NCC8 were going to come out to excavate, and they don't start until around 5pm.  We intended to partially overlap the excavation times.

The site was quite muddy from the morning rain when we got there. Some of the water had made its way into Emily and Sam's pit (EU18).

Chris kept working on level 3 of the SE quad to match the NE depth.  Dru also started removing the wall between the units (starting with the northern half of the wall).

When Chris was done with the SE quad, I started taking down the NW.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make much progress.  Dru took a smoke break, and the wind kept changing direction to blow the fumes directly on me.  Since I'm quite allergic to cigarette smoke, my lungs decided to stop functioning.  I just can't dig when I'm having an allergic reaction, so Sammy drove me back to the college.  When I got there I ended up using my inhaler and taking 4Tbsp. of Benadryl just to be able to breathe again.

Apparently, Chris found a nice rim sherd with punctate decorations on it in the border between the SW and SE quads after I left.  I washed it on a later day, and it's a nice piece.

Preparing to take down the walls and found a large pottery fragment

Remember that sandy matrix in the NE quad of Level 3?  I kept digging it.

It was mostly more of the same.  A lot of chert debitage, some occasional pottery fragments, bits of charcoal scattered around, that sort of thing.  Then I noticed the edge of a fairly long piece of pottery sticking out from the NW quad.  Robin told me to go ahead and dig it out carefully.

This pottery was very fragile.  I gently gripped the side of it to see how thick it was so I could get an idea of how to best remove it, and a piece broke off in my fingers when I wasn't even pulling on it.  I obviously couldn't use a trowel to dig it out because it's just not gentle enough for that kind of work.  So I removed most of the soil from around the pottery with a popsicle stick, then used a dental pick and brush to reveal the surface of the fragment so I would know where it ended and the soil began.

This is me trying to remove the pottery fragment and talk at the same time.  Apparently I can only do one well at a time.

The piece looked very large, like it was half a pot or something, while it was embedded in the soil.  Once I got it out it turned out to be significantly smaller than that, but still unusually large for Native American pottery in this area.

This is the pot fragment in all its radiant glory.

After I finished removing that, I kept digging out the rest of the quad.  Robin told us to arbitrarily end the level at 21in. so that Chris could have a turn to dig another quad.  So level 3 ended up extending from 13-21 in. in our unit.

Chris started digging the SE quad next so that the whole E half of the unit could be down.  We needed the whole E side down so that it would be roughly level with Dru and Sammy's unit (EU 16), so that both units would be roughly even when the wall between them was removed.

We had to leave a bit earlier than planned because rain was predicted to start, even though it ended up not falling.

Back to Glunk

Chris had finished clearing level 1 in all the quads and started on level 2 while I was sick.

We finished up Level 2 in the NW quad, and then got through it from scratch in the NE and SE quads.  Level 2 was mostly a historical layer, with bits of brick, glass, and nails in a clay matrix.

When Level 2, was complete we started Level 3 in the NE quad.  It was my turn to dig at that point.  Level 3 was a lot easier to get through than 2 because it was primarily sand.  Sand digs out and screens much faster and easier than clay.  Level 3 started at around 12-13 in. depending on the specific quad because of the slope of the land.

This level also revealed our first mappable feature in the NE quad.  This feature was a light stain of slightly softer sand.  It originally showed up as a "7" shape with a rounded shape meeting the bottom of the "7."  Gradually the diagonal part of the "7" disappeared, leaving a bar and mound roughly 6 inches apart of lighter colored sand.  If you have a Munsell soil chart handy, then the fact that the light stain was 10YR/4/3 and the surrounding soil was 10YR/4/4 will definitely mean something to you.  For those of you who do not, it basically means that there was really only a slight change in soil color, but it seemed dramatic since they were so close to each other.

 This is the stain from a funny angle.

Level 3 is a purely prehistoric layer.  There was quite a bit of chert debitage and some pottery fragments, but no historical remains at all.  I did not reach the bottom of level 3 yet because we had to pack up and leave for the day.

Muncy

This is the start of a new week after I recovered from my illness and graduated. Yay!

We went to visit the Muncy Historical Society.  In years past, our class had worked with them to excavate facilities associated with the canal that used to run through Muncy.  Since Robin had worked with them, we were able to get a personal tour of their house museum and the heritage park.

It was a very nice and informative tour.  It took about 5 hours altogether though, so I was tired at the end.

After we left Muncy, we had a late picnic lunch and then Robin treated us to ice cream at Eder's.  It's a local ice cream parlor with hand-packed ice cream.

We got a bit lost on the way back because Robin tried to show us a lake in the area, but her GPS wasn't in the car and phones don't get a signal in that stretch of mountains.  So it was a bit of an adventure, but we ended up going in one big circle and were able to get back to the college just fine.

Sick days

I was not able to do any field activities from April 30th to May 2nd because I had a bad stomach bug.  I missed some museum visits on the 30th and digging days on the 1st and 2nd.

Dru brought me some artifacts to catalog so I could make up the hours.  It's cataloging, so it wasn't that interesting and nobody really wants to read a description of it.

Artifact Cleaning Day

This was just a rainy and gross day.  We couldn't dig because of the wetness of the soil.  Our units would have been ruined if we'd pulled the tarp off of them.

So we spent the day washing the artifacts we uncovered the day before.  Robin borrowed a TV for us so we could be entertained while we washed artifacts.  Dru found this absolutely fantastic documentary called "Ancient Aliens Debunked."  It's just so beautiful.  It's factual and sassy at the same time.  This is the link to the documentary website: Ancient Aliens Debunked.  I know it's 3 hours long, but it is worth it and you should watch it.

We spent the day cleaning dirty artifacts and appreciating that documentary.  It was quite fun.

1st Day Digging at Glunk

This is the first day we dug at Glunk, our official class dig site.

We opened 3 new squares (which we had placed and strung way back on April 5th).  Chris and I got the middle excavation unit (EU), number 17.

Bit of background interjected here so you'll understand what I'm talking about.  Archaeologists, at least empirical ones with good record-keeping, dig in levels.  These levels are a way of assigning where an artifact was found and establishing dating.  Levels are generally based on stratigraphy.  Stratigraphy is the layering of various soil types and is quite helpful for establishing timelines because a soil change indicates that something has changed at the site, either with new occupation, flooding, large differences in plant growth, that sort of thing.  The thing is, you can't actually see the stratigraphy until after you've dug into the ground.  That can be cumbersome if you've already found artifacts because you have to go back and re-label where they were found based on the stratigraphy once you are done.  So to deal with that, we first assign an arbitrary level, just to get started through the immediate levels of topsoil and plow-zone.  After that, levels are generally changed when we notice a change in the soil composition.  We also write down the depths of the levels as we go, and specifically for the artifact bags we fill up from each level (some levels will fill up multiple bags and so they have different numbers within a level as we get deeper).  At Glunk, we also established quads in addition to the levels.  The four quads in the unit were arranged by direction (NE, NW, SW, SE).  All of the quads are part of the same level, but we would only dig one quad in one level at a time so we could have more exact positions for where the artifacts emerged.

Everyone's working on starting to excavate the 1st level.

At New Berlin, we established 10in. as the depth for the end of the first level.  It's just a nice even number that got us to actually establish the shape of the unit in the ground.  There were a few inches of topsoil, and then we encountered a clay matrix.  Clay is a pain to dig and screen because it's hard and really likes to stick to itself, so the digging took considerably longer than it would have in a more cooperative soil.  Chris and I alternated who was digging and sifting by quad, and he took the first turn digging.  We got through the Level 1 of the SW, NW, and NE quads.  We didn't really find anything interesting.  Level 1 is generally a mix layer where artifacts from different periods mingle because of various disturbances.  So we were finding bits of brick and glass along with tiny bits of debitage from flint-knapping.  It was just typical stuff you expect to find in a surface layer, especially where there has been plowing and construction in historical periods.

2nd New Berlin Dig Day

This was a rather eventful day.

We dropped by Subway on our way to the site to get some sandwiches for lunch.  I just got a plain ham sandwich.  That turned out not to be the last life choice because apparently the ham had a corn glaze on it, and I felt kinda sick later because of it.

Anyway, we got to the site around 10ish.  We unloaded the equipment and set up a tent Robin brought for us to have our paperwork station under.  Then we decided where test pits 5, 6, & 7 would be.  Dru and I worked on STP 6.

Dru and Chris lifting out the soil for one of the STPs.

We found a strange metal fragment (it looked like it might have been part of a hinge), lots of glass, some nails, and rocks.  Around 12in, we hit the clay layer that turned out to be sterile in the other pits.  We were going to keep going down for consistency, but ended up stopping before that.

Some members of the town historical society dropped by while we were working.  They gave us some pictures and town records of the church so we could get an idea of what we were looking for.  Then they mentioned that a woman in town had bought a fence from a thrift store, which was supposedly from the original church.  Robin and Chris went to go check it out.  Based on the size and shape of the poles, it appears that the fence was not from the church.

While they were gone, the rest of us (Sam, Emily, Dru, and I) continued digging our test pits.  Then we heard a whooshing noise.  And suddenly there was a tent pole a few inches from my head.  Apparently the wind from the creek had gotten so strong, that it blew the tent off the ground, flipped it over the stone monument, and landed it so that the tent poles happened to be inches from us as we were digging.  While I was still trying to recover from the mini-heart attack that caused, I noticed a black cable being held down by the wires.  It was stretching from a telephone pole to the house neighboring the site.  We assumed that it was a power cable, and were very concerned about touching it or the tent flipping again and possibly doing something to it.  So we carefully backed up the tent and folded it up so it couldn't catch the wind again.  Then we stood far away from the cable and tried to contact Robin.  We weren't able to get her on the phone (it turns out her phone had gotten switched to mute somehow).

When Robin and Chris got back to the site, we explained what had happened with the tent.  Dru had gotten a better look at the cable by this point and realized it was actually for delivering cable TV, and so would not actually be carrying enough charge to electrocute us.  Robin was still very wary of it, and told us to move everything away from that part of the site.  While we did so, the cable kept shifting toward us (it was apparently being held away from its desired angle by the screens).  After we moved everything, we put the tent back up, and actually secured it with stakes this time so the wind couldn't steal it again.  The president of the historical society got in touch with the homeowner for us to explain what had happened, and called the cable company to get the cord re-stapled to the side of the house.  The homeowner did get back later that day.  She was a very nice and understanding woman and was not angry at all about us accidentally removing a cable from the side of her house.  Apparently she'd switched to satellite over a year ago, so the cable was not even active anymore.

 Emily and Sam mapping the fence-posts (note the cable in the background).

We started back digging again after that, but not anywhere near the cable.  The initial test pits were filled in.  We didn't put STP 7 in the originally planned spot because it was right in the cables path, and instead put it in between the tent and the house we had accidentally de-cabled.  Dru dug it while I screened.  Chris and Emily worked on finding and mapping various spots where the bases of fenceposts were.

 Dru and I setting up STP 7.

STP 7 had some odd finds in it.  There were several pieces of ceramic of three different varieties, one was even decorated with pink paint.  We also found a lot of weird iron fragments.  They were very thin, and many of them were clustered together in large clumps.  Robin guessed they might have been chicken-wire, but there was no cross-hatching and having a bunch of straight wires doesn't seem useful as any sort of fencing.  So we're not really sure what those were.  There were also a few small bone fragments.

At the end of the day, we filled in STP 7 and packed up to go.  Overall, the day was quite productive despite the tent incident.  We found the old fence line, got some interesting artifacts, and learned useful information from the town historical society.

Half-Day of Cleaning

This day was not terribly exciting.  We washed the artifacts from our test pits in New Berlin.  It only took half a day.  I washed artifacts from the pits I worked on, so there was nothing new and exciting in them.  Robin decided to let us out early, so we could attend Medieval Lyco if we wanted to.  Medieval Lyco is a medieval festival at Lycoming.  It's very well done.

Here I am washing artifacts.  It wasn't actually on this day, but washing artifacts really looks the same no matter when you do it.

There was also some sort of Easter Egg hunt sponsored by the Education department in the morning, so a lot of small children were wandering by while we cleaned artifacts.  Overall, the day was quite uneventful though.

1st Day at New Berlin

Yes, our first day of finding the foundations of a church was a Sunday.  I think it was appropriate.  It was a cool day at first, but then it got pretty hot in the afternoon.  We stopped by Subway to pick up some sandwiches for lunch on our way there.

Chris and I mapped the site.  We focused on the stone monument (where the pulpit is said to have been, although it doesn't actually make sense based on the dimensions and placement of the church, but more on that later) and some post bases along Plum St (which is the eastern edge of the site).  The post bases are corroded metal poles just barely sticking out of their surrounding concrete and pushed down.  They actually turned out to be quite important, but we didn't know that when we were initially mapping them.  We also mapped a depression in the southern part of the site (closer to the creek), which might be the location of the outhouse. Emily and Sam started digging a test pit while Chris and I were mapping.

After we finished the initial map, Chris and I dug the second test pit (STP2).  Well, Chris dug and I sifted.  It was a small, square hole (about 2 shovel-widths long on each side).  We carefully removed a divot of the grass and put it on the edge of the tarp our sifter was on so that the pit could be back-filled and covered up when we finished.  It should have been fairly easy.  It was awful.  Almost immediately, we started finding rocks.  Mostly slate.  Some of them were huge and could have been part of the church that broke apart when it was demolished.  Many of them were tiny and just everywhere in the sifter.  

 Here's a video of me awkwardly explaining the dig while working on STP2.

Chris ended up doing a lot of the digging with a trowel because there were just too many rocks to get the shovel down.  There were some bits of brick, corroded nails, and ceramic fragments.  But there were hundreds of rocks in each bag we filled.  Towards the end, Robin told us not to bother keeping the large chunks of rock (especially since we'd run out of bags big enough to put them in).  We hit a layer of clay about 15 inches down.  It was a sterile layer (in this case sterile means that it didn't contain artifacts).  Although it was nice to not have rocks anymore, the clay was even worse to sift because it clumped up in these hard balls when I shook the sifter.  The clay balls pretended to be rocks, but they were vile deceivers.  So I was picking them up individually and crushing them to make sure they weren't balled up around anything important.  It was a really unfortunate pit.

 Here's a little video of all of us working. Sam and Emily have their own pits, and Chris is the one dumping soil into the sifter so I can screen.

After we back-filled STP 2 and plopped the divot back on, we started on STP 4.  STP 4 had more interesting artifacts and was more pleasant to dig.   We didn't keep any of the really big rocks and fewer of the small rocks, so we filled fewer artifact bags.  There were also fewer rocks in the pit to begin with.  We found the neck of a glass bottle, some bits of brick and nails, a mollusk shell, and a few fairly large pieces of ceramic.  After we hit the clay layer again we back-filled and replaced the divot since it was time to pack up and go.

At some point during all of that we ate lunch.  My sandwich reminded me that some ham is glazed with stuff that contains corn syrup which is deeply unfortunate since I am allergic to corn.  Luckily it was only a small amount, so I just got an upset stomach.  Near the end of our lunch break, Sam walked down towards the creek and discovered that the little monument there was to Lucy the goose.  A woman who lived down the road from the site explained that a family in the town had taken Lucy in after she broke a wing and she became the town mascot.

On the drive back to the college, we stopped at a little roadside farmer's market.  Emily brought me a bottle of Ocean Spray orange juice.  So I was drinking my juice as we were riding down the road again, and my tongue started itching and burning.  Apparently, Ocean Spray is one of the companies that cuts their orange juice concentrate with Tang (which is mostly high fructose corn syrup).  So I had an allergic reaction and had to use my emergency inhaler right there in the car after my first day of digging.  It was definitely an adventure.

Preparing for work

This was really just a prep day to make sure we had everything together before we went out digging.  In the morning, Emily and I organized the papers and equipment to figure out what needed to come with us into the field and what should stay in Robin Van Auken's office (she's our teacher and field director).  I duct-taped some dust pans together since they had cracked even though the were brand new.  I also obsessively checked every single pen and sharpie to make sure they still had ink and sharpened all the pencils.  That didn't take all morning though, so we also cataloged some artifacts from previous years of excavation.
Around 2pm, we went out to the Glunk site.  We cleaned out the storage shed on site to get rid of anything that had gotten moldy or eaten by mice.  Luckily there was only one mouse corpse in the shed and almost all of the stuff was still usable.  Then we went to go check out the excavation units.  We removed the tarp and the archy-canopy thingy that keeps it over the squares so we could take a look.  3 square were already started, although they had deteriorated some from weathering even with the tarp protecting them.  Paul Glunk was out and about riding a tiny bulldozer, so he came over to talk with us.  Robin introduced us and pointed out the area where we wanted to open up new excavation units.  Unfortunately, the space we were going to dig in happened to be where the previous units had been sifting, so there was a lot of soil build-up.  Mr. Glunk very helpfully used his little bulldozer to clear off the sifted material and some of the topsoil.  That probably saved us a day or two of useless digging.  After we thanked Mr. Glunk, he went off to continue his work.

 

This is Mr. Glunk clearing off the the sifted soil from previous years.

After that Chris tied 2 of the sifters and the 3 square-bottom shovels from the tool shed to the top of Robin's car so we would be able to use them at New Berlin on the 6th.  Since we had everything set up to go out tomorrow, we went back to the college and were set loose.

Introduction to what this whole blog is about

This is a blog about the goings-on at the Lycoming College archaeological field school in 2014.  It's part of a class called "Introduction to American Field Archaeology."  As part of this class, we go out and excavate American archaeological sites to get practical field experience in how archaeology and cultural research management are done in this country.  During this season, we actually focused on 2 different sites. 

The first one is the site of the first Evangelical Church and printing house in the United States.  It is in New Berlin, Pennsylvania on the corner of Plum St. and Water St.  Dr. John Piper, Dean Emeritus of Lycoming College, is part of the Evangelical Church Historical Society and asked our class to come out and find the foundations of the original church.  The historical society is planning a landscaping project to turn the site into a historical park which would damage the evidence.  We were asked to find the corners of the church so that markers could be placed on them.  This was not a full-scale excavation, but a project where we dug various test pits at regular intervals to try and locate specific walls and features.  I'll be talking more about that later when I go through the daily work at the site.

The second site is the one we spent more time working on.  It's known as the Glunk site (it's official site number is 36LY0345).  It has both historic and prehistoric artifacts, although we are more concerned with the prehistoric ones in this case.  It is likely an outlying area of Otstonwakin, a very large and important Native American settlement that sat on the intersection of Loyalsock Creek and the Susquehanna River.  The Susquehannock culture (hence the name of the river) was the primary group that inhabited the site. We are excavating on Paul Glunk's land (hence the site name).  The site is run by North Central Chapter 8, a Pennsylvania archaeological society (you can check out their blog here: http://pennarchaeology.blogspot.com/).  We are doing a full-on excavation there with squares, stratigraphy, and all that good stuff.

So, yeah... I'm going to be talking about going to those sites and archaeologizing (that's definitely a legitimate word, I made it up at least a week ago and made sure all of its tenses are pronounceable).