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Anthony takes a moment to reflect during the June excavation. Though it elicits sharp criticism from fellow excavators, the popped collar serves to protect from the sun,s equally sharp rays. |
Scholar's Journal
June
June found our heroes excavating a parking lot at Channing and Bowditch with their heads in the ground and butts in the air. The excavation was a field school run by the University of California, Berkeley under Professor Laurie Wilkie. Many of the students had never been on a dig, and it had been a year since my last excavation in Santa Cruz. Once I became reacquainted with my trowel, I poked the dormant earth and officially began my year long research project.
A quick history of the site: The house was built in 1895 by a wealthy "capitalist" named John Hinkel. On the property was a Victorian-style home (when it became a boarding house it had 24 rooms!), a greenhouse, and a carriage-house (later turned into a garage), all surrounded by a wide variety of well-groomed plants and trees. After he died his property was sold to a wealthy woman who then leased it out to female UC Berkeley students (late 1920s). The home had a Spanish theme and the house was called Casa Hispana. Aerial photos of the property highlight the transformation from well-groomed estate into flattened concrete surface. Much of this occurred during the 1950s, as the county responded to pressures from an increasingly vehicle centered society. Though it gained a few parking spaces, the university lost a unique piece of its history.
Despite being bulldozed and paved, the site proved resilient. Amazingly we found a number of artifacts representing the domestic lives of the women who lived there. One such artifact was an engraved container of lipstick, cosmetic packed tightly inside like some ancient turtle. Marbles and toys were also hidden beneath the rubble, indicating the presence of children not too careful with their belongings ... typical! Most of the artifact assemblage is comprised of glass and ceramics, which have yet to be closely examined and identified.
During June we held a day for the public, setting up tables with artifacts near a bulletin board with copies of historical documents and a timeline for the site. Lots of people came, including a grad student from Stanford with his summer class, some crack addicts, a historic society, and lots of journalists.
July
We were able to finish washing all artifacts after the first week of July, which I honestly did not think was possible. A small victory! Washing was a pretty painful experience... prune-y hands vigorously scrubbing 60-100 year old dirt off of a variety of surfaces with a toothbrush, and watch out for the sharp glass! Despite my lack of washing enthusiasm, this part of the process was important. The bags are brought directly from the site covered in dirt. Artifacts are removed from the bag onto a tray and then sorted out into main types; glass, metal, plastic, ceramic, bone, etc. Glass is divided into flat or curved (colored glass goes with curved). Skipping the boring details, after being washed and dried the artifacts are bagged according to type and put away.
With washing behind us, we moved onto labeling. The most important aspect of archaeology, which I have yet to mention, is controlling your data. Roughly speaking, this means taking vigorous notes while excavating and associating every item you pull from the ground to the specific area from which it was recovered. Without this provenience information all of the artifacts would be, more or less, useless for interpretation. Every step of the archaeological process entails keeping track of your artifacts, and we do this through these notes and labeling. Artifacts are put into bags labeled with their provenience, and inside each bag is a card with identical information. Along with this is a binder in which we keep records of every unit and the artifacts recovered. Labeling the artifacts themselves is just another step in this very important, and redundant, process.
The materials are not written on directly; instead we use nail polish! A layer of clear or white nail polish is applied to an artifact. Once dry, we write the provenience information onto the artifact using shorthand. In this case we write HH - Locus - Unit - Level. This would make sense to you if I had a site map, but I haven't created one yet so oops! Instead I have a long winded and needlessly confusing explanation. HH stands for Hinkel House, our site. We had four loci (basically large fenced in areas around the parking lot where the concrete was removed), A, B, C, and D, and each artifact is labeled with the locus it was discovered in. After the locus, we write in which unit the artifact was excavated (each Locus had several units), followed by the depth level. Not all artifacts are labeled, either. We can't label the rusty metal, and we decided not to label the flat glass due to the sheer volume of it (did I mention there was a greenhouse?).
Once the ink has had a chance to dry, we add a final coat of clear nail polish. After this, the artifacts can be handled without risk of smudging the ink and are rebagged. All coats of nail polish can be removed as well, so no materials are permanently scarred. This process takes quite a while, as there is a large volume of artifacts and several drying processes.
As for setbacks... well, shockingly enough I feel like I haven't done anything! The process it takes to get to a point where I can actually say something about a site is long indeed. Right now I can't say much, and this will probably remain true until late August. Kind of frustrating.
August
With labeling completed by the end of July, August sees us moving onto cataloging. The process of cataloging entails going through each bag of artifacts to be counted and typed. Ceramics are identified (porcelain, terra cotta, earthenware, etc) and the information is transferred onto a sheet of paper with a catalog template. This is our chance to inventory each bag and see exactly what we have, and then write the information into our catalog book. This is by far the most difficult step for me as I have never worked closely with 19th and 20th century materials. I must learn how to identify ceramics and plastics, far removed from my previous experience with shell and stone.
Despite my ignorance, the cataloging moves swiftly, and I enjoy handling the materials I will spend the next year with in an analytical way. Once everything is written into our catalog book, we will input the information into the digital database using the software FileMaker Pro. I have never used this before so will have to spend a few weeks learning the inner workings of database management. Once this database is complete I will have a powerful tool for analyzing the material culture excavated earlier this summer and can finally begin a detailed interpretation of the site. The fall semester starts in ten days, and my goal is to get everything in the digital database before then so that I can immediately start my archival research.
I began my research with much trepidation. At the end of each day I felt confused and unsure of my project and my ability to do what I set out to do. Now, with the summer portion of my research closely at an end, I find my doubts washed away by a wave of confidence and excitement.
