ARCHAEOLOGY CHRONICLES 21

sorry for lack of post yesterday. i had no internet connection. anyway yesterday my partner and i finished level 6 (10 cm down from level 5). the goal with these 10 cm levels is to get the measurements all the same. so we started level 7 at 75 cm in all corners and center. we did not find much. wood, metal, nails, bottle glass. but we uncovered something very interesting. on the E side from the N we found many large pieces of wood. i think we found this 2 days ago? i mentioned the B72 stuff we brushed on to harden it. anyway yesterday revealed more wood. much more. my partner was sent to help with another unit while i continued excavation by myself.

today i worked alone. i began with excavating the wood and metal but was told to stop and excavate the rest of the unit. this is because we are fast running out of time and the wood and metal need time. so i worked on the rest of it for the morning. after lunch i filled out whatever paperwork i had for the level as well as Feature 15 which we never really finished 'til then. i then spent the rest of the day screening. the supervisors will finish the unit on friday after we are all gone. anyway before we arrived the supervisors had dug 2 trenches with a backhoe to get a good look at the stratigraphy and maybe find some foundation. so all the dirt from that was piled up as been slowly screened throughout the course of the fieldschool by volunteers mostly as well as the supervisors and some students. one trench has been done but the other is only half done and needs to be done by the time we finish tomorrow. so that was what i was screening. and will be screening tomorrow.

i finished the day by filling in one of the units. first we put a 2009 quarter in a ziploc bag in the bottom of the unit. (this is the first unit i worked on by the way) the 2009 quarter dates the excavation in case anyone digs it up. then we put black plasic in followed by a large number of large rocks. this is an indicator to future archaeologists that this is where we stopped digging. then we filled the unit with screened dirt so if someone digs there again they will find no artifacts.

after class we took a tour of the cemetaries. there are several within one. most of miners had come from the british isles and the eastern u.s. and they spent over $3000 on irrigating the cemetaries in the 1800s. today i think she said it would cost more than $3 million. so the cemetaries were lush and green. grass, flowers, trees, etc. all this stuff that the comstockers were used to. the cemetary was actively used until about 10 years ago. i saw a headstone that was dated 1990. anyway the place isn't irrigated anymore so it looks like the rest of nevada. a desert. the graves were set apart in boxes. they had either rock or wood walls around the individual sites. many of them were even fenced in and had little gats on them. one grave was a 3 year old boy whose father had built an aviary around his grave. in the 1960s (well throughout time but mostly the 60s) it became popular to sell headstones as souvenirs. so many of the comstockers stole the headstones and other bits of the graveyard. like small statues and gates and fences and such. well the lady who gave the tour got possession of the cemetaries as a historical landmark and put a big iron fence around them all. which is about 30 acres of land. she said the robberies reduced by 87% by putting in that fence. way in the back of the site is the catholic cemetary and it is the most intact with the majority of it's headstones and stuff because thieves are lazy. near the catholic cemetary used to be where the gravekeeper lived with his family. the house is gone now but it is a site ripe for the archaeological picking. i'm very tempted.