Mark of a Sifter
It is the start of the weekend for me, Sunday. I had to work this morning but, nothing eventful happened no fun passengers. I now have the afternoon to relax with no pressing issues. The past week I had to deal with leading the discussion and the Test plus some heavy duty sifting, which I will explain later. There are only two weeks left to the dig so it should be mostly down hill from here. I also took pictures this week, not much but a few, lets see if I can post them correctly.
Thursday began with us getting our tests back, I got a 90. We were suppose to be hit by another storm that day, this time with thunder and lightning. However it was moving very slowly so we were going to get in as much digging as possible before it hit. All the rain from the day before had made the soil moist and compact so the sifting was slow going. I ended up doing the majority of the sifting and it has left me sore even up till today. During lunch we given a guest lecture from a lady named Marge, who is a Native American Archaeologist who specializes in Oral History. The discussion we had had on Wednesday was on her article on Oral History. Which is better written history or oral history, I pose that question to you! Before we could get going again we started hearing thunder so we gathered the equipment and stored it in the van. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the lab. The lab did not have much work so myself and two others, my pit partner included, were sent to tour Historic Deerfield, since I lab is in the middle of it. It was interesting enough and we found plenty of points where they show Native Americans, or Savages according to them, in bad light. Our lab and a few other aspects are suppose to make the place more politically correct. The rain however never did show and the thunder we had heard ealier was all that their was. So the afternoon was atleast a little relaxing. The few tour guides we ran into were helpfully and funny.
Friday was clear skies all day so we were in the feild for all of it. My pit partner was a guy from Tiawan, named Mor, who turned out to have amazing eyes. He was able to pick out a bunch of beads that were about 1.3mm in diameter. In total between the two of us we found about 8 beads that day. The soil had also dried out so it was a lot easier to sift and search for artifacts. I can't help but think that the previous days sifting resulted in a loss of beads from having to shove soil through the sifter, since the beads probably got shoved through screen. I also conviced Mor that instead of dividing the sifting by morning and afternoon that we should trade off every two buckets, this helped out so much with our speed and accuracy. The other groups were soon following our method. That day we also found what we thought might of been a large bone fragment, about 3cm long and 2 cm wide, this is very large compared to all the other pieces we've found. As we continued down I noticed a white mark on our pit wall which I cleared away to reveal another possible large bone fragment. They would later turn out to be mortar.
Undead Mortar
Saturday began with our evalutations. These were basically a "How your doing so far" with no real grade attached. I got a good evalution and a comment on my great people skills. The rest of the day continued much like Friday. Mor, the pit partner, and I found about 11 more beads, a crazy high amount. We had a bunch of visitors and the professor kept showing everyone all the beads we had found, she was very excited. Then towards the end of the day Mor pulled out a piece of wampum from the sifter. Wampum is a shell bead that was used as currency by the Native Americans/Dutch. It was the Dutch that introduced the currency system to the Indians, who usually bartered between tribes. Sorry no picture of the Wampum. The true excitement about the wampum is that our professor in her 22 years of digging has never found Wampum before, especially in Deerfield. She was very excited and after all the visitors left she spent the rest of the afternoon helping out in our pit, which was about an hour atmost.
These are pictures of Mor, my pit partner for this week. The first picture is him looking through the sifter and the second is him holding up a pot sherd he found.
As this picture illustrates the TA works hard while we relax in our pits.
A slight example of Stratigraphy. The dark soil is the "plow zone" and the lighter soil is the B horizon.
My current Pit. 1x2 meter pit.
Backfilling, gotta fill the hole after digging it out.
Thursday began with us getting our tests back, I got a 90. We were suppose to be hit by another storm that day, this time with thunder and lightning. However it was moving very slowly so we were going to get in as much digging as possible before it hit. All the rain from the day before had made the soil moist and compact so the sifting was slow going. I ended up doing the majority of the sifting and it has left me sore even up till today. During lunch we given a guest lecture from a lady named Marge, who is a Native American Archaeologist who specializes in Oral History. The discussion we had had on Wednesday was on her article on Oral History. Which is better written history or oral history, I pose that question to you! Before we could get going again we started hearing thunder so we gathered the equipment and stored it in the van. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the lab. The lab did not have much work so myself and two others, my pit partner included, were sent to tour Historic Deerfield, since I lab is in the middle of it. It was interesting enough and we found plenty of points where they show Native Americans, or Savages according to them, in bad light. Our lab and a few other aspects are suppose to make the place more politically correct. The rain however never did show and the thunder we had heard ealier was all that their was. So the afternoon was atleast a little relaxing. The few tour guides we ran into were helpfully and funny.
Friday was clear skies all day so we were in the feild for all of it. My pit partner was a guy from Tiawan, named Mor, who turned out to have amazing eyes. He was able to pick out a bunch of beads that were about 1.3mm in diameter. In total between the two of us we found about 8 beads that day. The soil had also dried out so it was a lot easier to sift and search for artifacts. I can't help but think that the previous days sifting resulted in a loss of beads from having to shove soil through the sifter, since the beads probably got shoved through screen. I also conviced Mor that instead of dividing the sifting by morning and afternoon that we should trade off every two buckets, this helped out so much with our speed and accuracy. The other groups were soon following our method. That day we also found what we thought might of been a large bone fragment, about 3cm long and 2 cm wide, this is very large compared to all the other pieces we've found. As we continued down I noticed a white mark on our pit wall which I cleared away to reveal another possible large bone fragment. They would later turn out to be mortar.
Undead Mortar
Saturday began with our evalutations. These were basically a "How your doing so far" with no real grade attached. I got a good evalution and a comment on my great people skills. The rest of the day continued much like Friday. Mor, the pit partner, and I found about 11 more beads, a crazy high amount. We had a bunch of visitors and the professor kept showing everyone all the beads we had found, she was very excited. Then towards the end of the day Mor pulled out a piece of wampum from the sifter. Wampum is a shell bead that was used as currency by the Native Americans/Dutch. It was the Dutch that introduced the currency system to the Indians, who usually bartered between tribes. Sorry no picture of the Wampum. The true excitement about the wampum is that our professor in her 22 years of digging has never found Wampum before, especially in Deerfield. She was very excited and after all the visitors left she spent the rest of the afternoon helping out in our pit, which was about an hour atmost.
These are pictures of Mor, my pit partner for this week. The first picture is him looking through the sifter and the second is him holding up a pot sherd he found.
As this picture illustrates the TA works hard while we relax in our pits.
A slight example of Stratigraphy. The dark soil is the "plow zone" and the lighter soil is the B horizon.
My current Pit. 1x2 meter pit.
Backfilling, gotta fill the hole after digging it out.