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.
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.
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.
