Thanks to a beautiful day for outside work, we were able to make great progress today in the on-going excavations. The first photograph below shows students working on the first trench -- the cut limestone blocks in the center are the foundation for the east wall of the church. The large cluster of bricks being carefully exposed by students in the lower part of the photograph is the remnants of the east wall of the church, tumbled into the interior of the church during its destruction. This "level" (see June 4) appears to be undisturbed since destruction of the church in 1864.

All soil from the excavations are processed through 1/4-inch hardware mesh to recover artifacts. The process is tedious and time-consuming -- most buckets are full of 60% dirt; 39% brick fragments, rocks, and gravel; and 1% artifacts. The "science" part of archeology requires recovery of each fragment of glass and ceramics, nails, mortar, etc. While seemingly mundane and boring to find and record, something as simple as the quantity of window glass in a unit gives clues to the location of windows. Measurements of the thickness of that window glass can provide clues to the dates of construction and renovation of buildings like the church.

The photograph to the left shows a selected set of artifacts from a single level in the excavations. While perhaps not as visually exciting as those objects selected for a museum display, as the analysis proceeds in the laboratory each of them will provide critical information about the church building and activities associated with the church. The glass, nails, bricks, and mortar recovered give us detailed information about the church architecture -- things that were not considered important enough by the builders to write down for us today. The types of buttons, combs, and other personal items tell us about how the people who met at the church dressed and presented themselves.

Amongst those mundane artifacts is occasionally a "special item" -- nothing of great monetary value, but something that reminds us of the people who lived before us. The tiny copper charm in the shape of a harp shown below is an example of one of those artifacts. Because it was found in one of the Level 1 mixed deposits in the yard of the church, I'm not sure of the date of this artifact yet (no time for research on artifact types while working in the field!). Nonetheless, it does give one pause to discover such an intriguing item amongst the window glass, brick fragments, and chunks of limestone.