ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 14

today we spent an hour going over our weekly readings boring. then we spent the next two hours doing the stratigraphy profile of our shovel test pit. i can't believe it took that long. my partner is very finicky about paperwork and getting everything just so, but she is terrible at stratigraphic profiling. she's frankly lazy about it. anyway after lunch we set up a new unit. in the middle of hay. which was fun because it was different. so we set-up our 1 meter square on the site grid with nails (these nails are about a cm thick and a foot long). we then lined up nails on the outside of the unit to tie the string around so we would not have to worry about corner nails coming loose. this took up a suprising amount of time too. then we took a photo of our surface layer of trampled hay, and filled out all the paperwork. surface done. then we got out level 1 paperwork and claered and screened the hay. we found a brick, and lots of plastic, and some peanut shells. nothing really exciting. we then quit for the day because it was looking like rain. tomorrow we go to work on the hay roots. at Barbary Coast i will be excavating in 10 cm layers. so natural layers will be ignored during our excavation. my one complaint about the site is the fact that it is in the midst of thorny trees. ouch. they poke.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 13

today i was switched up to Barbary Coast. they want every student to work both sites and they left one girl up there (up there i mean 2 streets up a very steep hill) for reasons unknown but brought her down today and sent me up. i have another partner and supervisor and sub-supervisor. my partner and i finished the unit they had been working on. the only thing left was stratigraphy and paperwork. the unit revealed the foundation wall of what was once a butcher shop. that was half the unit. the other half went down quite far. i was permitted to climb in to get the stratigraphic measurements and the hole was up to my ribcage! afterwards we pulled up the nails and string that marked the perimeter and covered it with a tarp.

our next task was to dig a Shovel Test Pit. the hole is about shovel size. these are done to determine whether an area is worth excavating. if very little artifacts show up they don't put a unit there. if they find lots of stuff they put in a unit. we took a picture, started paperwork, and stuck in our shovel. unfortunately for us our shovel only worked for the first 15 cm. then we hit bricks. just thrown in bricks not placed. we found nothing except bricks for about 50 cm. then we found a lot of milled wood. then at about 60 cm we found a cool metal thing. it looked like a stove lid or something. it was mostly flat with a rounded end that might have been a hinge to open and close it. on the bottom of the flat end was a handle. and between the the handle and the round end was embossed PATENTED 1885. it was cool. i was excited. after that we were done with our hole (we did 10 cm levels through the hole, testing soil color, filling out paper work, screening dirt, etc) we finished our paperwork and took another picture.

we took a tour of Maguire's after lunch. very little has changed with my last unit except they found more concrete. my first unit is almost ready to close. they never found the foundation we were looking for.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 12

today we finished up with photos, depth measurements and soil color and texture info for the paperwork for level 3 dirt. we began level 4 excavation. we plowed through quite a bit of it. by plow through i mean we went down about 3 or 4 cm. we found 3 squashed cans today, some porcelain, a lot of metal (from cans and nails and such), more string, more concrete. about 1:30 or 2 it began to rain. we have tent shades to block the sun from cooking us while we work, but today they were used to block the rain. it didn't rain long, less than 1/2 hour. we were given the option of packing up and working in the lab or staying outside to work. we chose to stay. i was very happy. i love rain. it even hailed! it was very exciting. that was pretty much all we did. i acidently lost some dirt i was supposed to screen. i was screening by myself and i couldn't get the screen up and some dirt fell out. oops. one of the sub-supervisors saw it and said no worries, so i didn't.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 11

today was spent excavating level 3. again. we are going in 10 cm incriments instead of soils layers. in my last unit we went by layers and layers changes so fast i think our thickest was only a few cm. side note on my previous unit. they excavated past the rocks and are now finding large cow bones that have been cut (like from a butcher). back to my current unit. my partner is obsessed with porcelain and every time he finds some he spends a good half hour on looking at, identifying, talking about, writing and sketching it in his notebook, and anything else he can think of to do with it. it gets really annoying after a while. especially when we are trying to excavate quickly. we are doing arbitrary (10 cm) levels instead of dirt levels because they want this unit to go faster than the unit next to it. the idea is our unit will give them stratigraphy and depths of layers for the neighbor. the neighbor is deeper than we are. we finished level 3 today (barely). we found porcelain and other ceramics, nails, concrete blocks, slabs of metel, a bottle base, and a string wound up by the concrete and metal. that was exciting. i like my partner, he's just really slow. because our units are right next to each other they have left a 10cm barrier between them (5cm per unit) to avoid mixing and collapsing of units into each other.

the last 2 days we have had a field school class from one of the local community colleges come and help us in the lab, with screening and excavating. they have spent the last 3 weeks doing survey (see chronicle 9). they have been surveying for the forestry service, but are not permitted to excavate anything they find. they are really good at survey now, and are really bored with it (including the professor). i think they intend to come help us out every day we're there, just so they don't have to survey.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 10

today people were switched around. i am still at maguire's opera house but i am at a different unit with a different partner. i am now excavating for the back alleyway of the opera house. we want to know what kind of trash they threw away, if anything was there before the opera house was built in 1863, and if anything happened on the property after the fire of 1875.

so i came into the unit in the midst of level 3 excavation. the dirt levels are thicker here so it takes more time to go through them. our unit is connected to another unit (which is deeper than ours) and they are looking for the same stuff we are, just 1 meter west. anyway we tried to excavate the rest of level 3 and did not succeed. like i said the levels are thicker here. we found feature 10 (of the whole maguire site) it consists of five laid out pieces of old concrete (like the sidewalks at my parents house) along with a large piece of flat metal sticking straight up next to one of the concrete chunks. today we found a chunk of tar shingle, the bottom of a bottle, bits of porcelain (painted), nails, glass, ceramics, a big piece of a saucer plate, and a lot of melted stuff (metal, glass, plaster, etc). the happy thought associated with this unit is there are less rocks to dig around.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 9

no excavations today. we met at 9 instead of 7 this morning. we went to the Nevada Historical Society on campus and spent 2 hours there. here are my notes from that that i took specifically for your benefit. Not really user friendly you have to work with staff. Started in early 1900s. Many artifacts, photos, etc are one of a kind. Nevada stuff and a little from nearby states like California. It’s OK to be chatty about research. Glean info from others. Virginia city card catalog 1859-1881. Maps. Good for genealogy research. Some individuals have their info collected in one place for convenience. Cards on EVERYTHING. Seriously. History. because of fires theft etc. Document everything. Whew it's over. i was bored. i have absolutely nothing to look up there. no research paper. no family history. nothing. boring. i miss my dirt.

after lunch we met in a classroom on campus and discussed homework readings for an hour. boring. then we got a 5 minute survey lesson then drove out to a nature park (Nevada nature is hot and sagebrush which i am highly allergic to) and learned to survey. this was the fun part (no that is not sarcasm). we were shown the survey area on the map. we were given flag markers and compases. then we were lined up in a row. and told to walk due west while looking for artifacts and sites on the ground. when someone found something we would all stop and the supervisor would go check it out and pinpoint it on the GPS he had. if there were a lot of related artifacts in an area we would spread out to determine the dimensions of the site. then we would continue onward. he kept it as short as possible because it's near 100 degrees out there.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 8

day 8. when we arrived on site one side of our tarp (we cover our units with tarps to prevent problems) had fallen in. so i had to carefully remove the surface dirt without taking out any other dirt. after that we excavated the rest of our Feature 4 oxidized soil and the rest of our level 4 dirt which was only still in the SE corner. about that SE corner, nothing seems to touch it but dirt. if anything interesting happens anywhere in our unit it does NOT happen in the SE corner. we cleaned up our walls and put the stuff we found in a separate bag because it was coming from all levels. anyway after that we excavated our level 5 dirt. when we finish a level we measure and map in anything bigger than a fist (mostly rocks) we fill in our paperwork, we measure how deep we have dug from the line level we have tied to the NW corner nail (a large nail in each corner to mark the unit with a string going around the perimeter). then we take a photo. the excess dirt from the excavation is carefully collected and dumped in a bucket. the bucket dirt is then screened. (it just occurred to me that i had not explained that) then we take our paperwork and bag of artifacts from the level (or feature) down to the lab where the papers are filed and the artifacts are cleaned and sorted and labeled. after finishing level 5 we excavated level 6. levels 4 and 5 had a boatload of rocks which made things difficult for us and slow-going. level 6 had less rocks. had more tourists today. they had seen us on the news and read about us in the paper and came up just to see our excavations. we have not found any mortar yet which would tell us we hit foundation rocks.

an important thing to note is the fact that the further down we go the less we find. we find less bits of glass and nails and such. but what we DO find is bigger stuff. bigger pieces of glass, bigger nails, we found a couple of bottlenecks today (one of them even had some cork still in it!) we found a can lid and some bones (including a rib) it has been an adventure. on monday people will be shifting around. i don't know if i will stay at the opera house or if i will be moving up to Barbary Coast.

all these chronicles and i never mentioned the other units at our site. there are 3 more that the other students are working on. one is down by the road where the back of the opera house was. they are excavating where the stage used to be. they just started this week and are only down to their second level. the other 2 units are right next to each other and are in the alleyway on the south side of the opera house. they are looking for the trash that was thrown away and (if they are really lucky) the alleyway itself which could have been rock, brick, or just dirt.

if you have any questions about anything at all just ask.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 7

Here is the Nevada Appeal article about our excavation. in the photo is my partner, my sub-supervisor, and my site supervisor. and yes that is my unit.

day 7. we finished measuring our stratigraphy this morning. it was obnoxious because some of the layers disappeared and others switched places. we then went to town on our feature 4 charcoal and oxidized soil. this feature covers all but the SE corner of our site. we excavated down to level 5 dirt on the NE side. and in the NW quadrant we excavated 10 cm and stopped because once you hit 10 cm on a level you need to get new paperwork and everything. this helps to breakdown where things are and how deep. we mapped in all rocks bigger than a fist. we found a bottle neck, lots of bone (bone found yesterday was from a cow) and more cloth (canvass insulation??)

our unit is now deep enough that excavation has taken on a new method. i have to lay on my stomach now to reach in and dig up dirt. it's not so bad... unless i have to stand up. then i get a terrible headache after having my head down so long.

had more tourists today. the UNR professor over everything we do, Don Hardesty, came today. and here's the exciting bit. my partner and i were knighted today. we are now in charge of our own screening :) this has sped things up a bit. before when we would screen we were not permitted to dump our waste (rocks, pebbles and dirt left after pulling out artifacts) without it being checked by the supervisor or one of the two sub-supervisors. now we decide when we're done and can dump without someone else checking our screens. yay!

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 6

day 6. the rodent did not return! yay! ha! we scared it off. ok so a lot happened today. we finished level 3 dirt and moved on to level 4 dirt. the problem with level 4 dirt was the whole west half of the unit (i had mislabeled the site is the opera house and the hole we are digging is a unit of that site) was covered with a charcoal layer. which was very exciting. this we have been looking for. for real this time. ok so stratigraphy review. top soil (level 1). level 2. ash/plaster. oxidized soil. level 3. level 4 with charcoal layer (identified as feature 4). then there is oxidized soil underneath. so what i think is going on (i could be wrong but it the most plausible explanation out there) is there is a house/shed on the property and when that was built i think a lot of the dirt was shoved to the side and piled up. this would explain our crazy stratigraphy. and the charcoal and oxidized layer that we are hitting now are the actual burn layers of the fire. this charcoal layer yeilded interesting stuff today. we found large pieces of wood and burnt wood. boatloads of nails (again) and larger than rodent bones and bits of cloth (possibly wallpaper??) the screening of the charcoal layer was very dirty. my partner and i were completely covered in sooty soil. i almost forgot we found a cluster of burnt plant seeds (unknown what they are specifically). we ended the day measuring and drawing our crazy stratigraphy. we get our line level and measure every layer at 10 cm intervals. it was difficult because our unit is on a slope and the stratigraphy we were measuring is on the west side at the top of the slope. not fun. especially since all the surface dirt likes to fall in our hole and i kept falling downhill.

had more tourists today. and a reporter from the Nevada Appeal (Nevada's oldest newspaper). she took pictures of our site and my partner and supervisor and sub-supervisor. i had gone down to the lab for a bottle for bulk sampling of the seeds so i was not photographed. whew. we found another metal button today but forgot it and lost it. oops.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 5

day 5. the rodent came back.it wasn't as bad this time. i had a lot less clean up this morning. we finished level 2 dirt. found more oxidized (burnt) soil and ashes and charred wood. we found a piece uf half burnt lumber (about 6 cm long) with three nails in place. that was very exciting. we also found a metal button and a bead with the little metal loop in it (part of an earing?) those were also exciting. my line of rocks were not foundation :( we began excavation on level 3 dirt today. our hole is less than 50 cm deep (level with NW corner. we are on a slope) so no worries with having to reach down too far. the issue my partner and i have been having is with surface dirt getting into our site. Nevada is very dry and the dirt is very finely granulated and as we dig out dirt we get the loose dirt from the surface around our site falling in. in our screenings we have found boatloads of rusted metal. it far outweighs anything else we have found (except maybe plaster but we don't collect that except to show some was there)

we had tourists today. a family. they came in and looked at the sites and we explained what we were doing and looking for. they had seen us on the news and had been looking all over Virginia City for us. the news finally put us on last night and this morning (channel 4 in Reno).

we went up to the Barbary Coast site today. they have 2 holes up there. one found the foundation of the grocery store and the other founf the foundation of the butcher shop. the butcher shop was interesting. there was a lot of wood and there were brick stacks (2 or 3 high) 20 cm apart then some brick laid out below. with some brick rows that looked as though they had tumbled over. and around the brick layout was a leather band with nail holes in it. they think it was nailed into the foundation. another strip of leather was also attached and continued on. no one knows why the leather is there. we lack architects. any ideas?

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 4

day 4. today was interesting. it began with the rodent hole. the rodent visited the site over night. the little goober. messed up our dirt. so we had to dig the dirt out of the hole and sift and bag it before we could move on. the rest of the day was spent on level 2 dirt (the herd packed dirt under the loose surface stuff). we removed quite a bit of it. there are several large rocks lined up that we are hoping is foundation which is the particular thing we are looking for in our 1 meter x 1 meter hole. however it could just as easily be more debris. we need to remove more dirt before we can determine. in our level 2 dirt we found a plaster layer. it was ashy grey in color and was lens shaped. it did not run the the whole meter from north to south and tapered at the ends. underneath that we found oxidized or burnt soil. woot. this is something we have been looking for. evidence of the fire that burned down the opera house. the plaster layer because it was not consistent throughout the site was given feature status as apposed to dirt level. it is a large something of interest (or intrusion like the rodent hole).

we worked later than usual today because the professor who's in charge of the whole thing came to see our sites and he didn't arrive until the time we usually pack up. the day was extra hot too. yuck. hot and dry. double yuck. I'm glad i don't have a dust allergy. i just have to worry about the sagebrush everywhere. we had our first tourists today. three people came to look at the sites and asked us questions about what we were doing and such. i was complimented by the supervisors and the professor on my nice straight walls around the site perimeter. straight walls are important because as you go down it makes it easier the see the stratigraphy of the dirt layers and accurately measuring depths. tomorrow is Saturday and I'm kinda disappointed i won't be going up there. i like excavating.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 3

day 3. today we finished the excavation of our layer 1 dirt. then we excavated the rodent hole we found. a rodent had disturbed the site while we were gone. we treated the cortavina (the technical term for rodent hole) like we would a feature. a feature is more than an individual artifact or it's something that is bigger and takes up a large portion of the site. anyway the rodent hole got feature status and was treated differently because level 1 was loose dirt and level 2 is hard packed dirt. the hole was loose tunneling by the rodent in the midst of the packed dirt. it was a mix of level 1 and level 2 dirt so it was done seperately. anyway the rodent hole ran from north to south on our site and from west to the middle. very few artifacts were found in this dirt. the cool thing we found today was a red cut stone about bead size. we think it was once jewelry or on a dress. believe it or not this little bit of excavation took up our day.

we took a trek up to the Barbary Coast site. it is in someone's backyard. they found lots of brick. they think it was a dump site and had everything shoved back to level it out and make room for the portable house that now stands there. they were puzzleing over the fact that one of the sites there had laid brick over wood (boards? beams? unknown at this time) they wondered if it was architectural. in the front yard the lady who owns the property is trying to get it ready for sod. she uncovered what we believe is the front foundation wall. it was cool to see.

channel 4 news here in Reno came today. they only came to the Maguire site where i was working. they shot film of the trench (dug to find the foundation) the two spots where the other students are working and my spot. they shot some students screening and they interviewed the guy who is technically in charge of the Virginia City excavations and one of my classmates. they asked me if i wanted to interview but i said no.

the Virginia City sites are open to the public to come in and see what we are doing and ask us questions and even join us in our work. there's a local lady who's been there 2 days now and she does the same work we do. i think it is a good opportunity for people to learn what archaeology is and how it's done.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 2

Day 2 today i started actual excavation. I'm working on the Maguire Opera House. excavation is a slow process. they remind us to go slow so we don't miss or ruin anything. my partner and I set up a 1m x 1m square perfectly aligned to true north (as apposed to magnetic north) then we took a picture and logged it in the photo log. we then removed all the small artifacts. artifacts are anything that is made by humans. we even collected a bendy straw! anyway. after that we mapped out the rocks bigger than a fist. when we were done with that we removed everything from the surface and began to dig. like i said it's slow going. we had to carefully with as straight lines as we could get (going down the sides) we removed all the loose dirt. this was our 1st layer. as we dug with trowels and swept the loose stuff away with a hand broom we removed all artifacts we could find. mostly we found broken glass and nails. the nails were all rusty and most of them were square. we also found plaster and burnt wood. (remember the Maguire Opera House was destroyed in a fire) under the loose dirt is a hard packed layer with an ashy grey color to it. we will dig this up tomorrow. one more thing. all the loose dirt from layer 1 was kept in a bucket which we dumped in a screen so we could pick out the artifacts we missed. good for us there wasn't much left :)

archaeology is a paperwork job. everything we do has to be written down. including the weather. i wish i could keep some of the stuff to show you but it it's a felony to swipe artifacts from a site. anyway. that's all we did today. doesn't sound like much does it? it kept us busy.

ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 1

day 1 in Virginia City, Nevada. famous for the Comstock Silver Lode. we took a tour of the town today. we will be excavating the 1st opera house that was built there. Maguire's Opera House burnt down in 1875. by then it was no longer the Maguire Opera House because a guy named Piper bought it. Piper also built the Piper Opera House that still stands today. they are renovating the building. i learned the origin of the term "upstaging". the audience floor is flat with removable chairs to accommodate dancing. and the stage slopes upward by about 5 inches from front to back. so a guy in the back goofing around is upstage of the main actor. the ceilings are made of canvas. and the acoustics are really good. every famous performer stopped there from the time it was built until the early/mid-1900s. Mark Twain lived in Virginia city before he changed his name and made a point of coming back (he had moved to California) to the opening of the Maguire opera house and stayed in town until they made him leave. in their day the Comstock Opera Houses were of THE places to go.

next we wandered about the courthouse. also more than a century old. it's all fancy looking and there's an unblind-folded lady justice on the front. it used to be you had a choice between seeing and blind justice. there are a bazillion saloons. most of which are still saloons that sell hot dogs and such. one is an ice cream bar. anyway we saw the odd fellows house and a few others. we walked up what is called Barbary Coast, which is the second site to be excavated this summer. Barbary Coast became a slang term in the 1800s to mean the ghetto of a city. the term comes from the coast in africa when Jefferson decided to get involved in foreign affairs. they showed us some foundations poking up out of the dirt where we will be digging there. there's a grocery and a tin shop (which has 3 standing walls) and residences and saloons and a lodging house across the street. there's also a mansion (can't remember the name) that had a flushing toilet before 1900. they ran water in from Lake Tahoe because the local water was nasty. (still is according to the supervisors).

archaeologically we learned screening today. dump a bucket of dirt in the screen and sift out the dirt and pick out the artifacts. we did this at the maguire opera house that burnt down. we found plaster, charcoal, melted glass, non-melted glass, a rodent tooth (looks more like a claw to me) a few steak bones, a couple of buttons, a suspender hook, a bolt that looks like the ones that hold tires on a car, nails, other metals. all kinds of stuff. then we went inside and cleaned the stuff off and sorted and labeled it.

it's a long day. we meet at 7 am to drive up and come back about 4:30. it's a full-time job. too bad I'm only getting 6 credits (2 classes) for this. this dig is very important for my schooling and my career. i just remembered this dig is a public dig. that means it's a tourist attraction and we have to chatty with them and let them see the site and everything. same with reporters for newspapers and TV. so keep an eye on the news for the following keywords: Virginia City, Comstock, Maguire Opera House and Barbary Coast.