This past Monday was an exciting day of digging for The Archaeology of College Hill! We had an extended session, and luckily the weather was warm.

In QG 4, or trench 4, we mostly focused on removing Context 2, and only removed a small amount of soil from Context 5. Context 2 proved to be chock full of artifacts, and many were larger in size. We found a lot of brick chunks, nice pieces of decorated pottery, and some big hunks of glass. Even more interesting were the pieces of porcelain that I found, in that they all appeared to be from the same vessel, especially in that many of the pieces had the same line running along them. I also came across what seems to be either a metal button or a type of thumb tack that would have been used to affix papers to a bulletin board. We also had a Boy Scout visit us, and he was extraordinarily good at spotting artifacts while we were sifting. Hopefully he spent enough time breaking up dirt clumps and scouring for pieces of pottery to earn him his archaeology badge! I’m not sure it was his favorite activity, but he definitely put in a lot of effort.

Rob works on cleaning up trench QG4

In QG 4 we still have maintained the area with a multitude of stones that seem to have been put there in some way, rather than being a natural occurrence, and are working to level out the trench in order to get a better idea about what this area is. It seems as though it could potentially be part of the old path, but we are not sure yet.

In QG 3, we reached a level of soil that appears to be a natural deposit, meaning that it is beyond the context where the foundation, or any evidence of activity, would be. This prompted us to stop making the trench deeper and look into a rocky corner section of the trench even more, in case it is in fact a part of the foundation. Since only a small portion was visible, we decided to extend the trench in this corner with the addition of a small ‘L’ shaped section. Though the context of interest is at least 80cm down, the diggers had to maintain the same level of care they put into removing each layer in the larger trench. This process is still underway, and we will hopefully reach the same level as the larger trench soon.

Janice and Tanya take a quick break for a photo op’ in trench QG3

We have very little digging time left, considering the inevitable arrival of winter weather, but even after the digging ends there is much more to be done! We have lots of paper work and photographs documenting our time spent outside, as well as many finds to sort through and analyze. As enjoyable as digging and sifting is, it will be nice to finally take a closer look at all of the information we have gathered.

Our end-of-day shot for Trench QG3

Our end-of-day shot for trench QG4