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.
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