Day 3, Session I Was Much Better

For one thing, it was cooler and less humid, and it didn't rain at all (mirabile scriptu!). For another, on the dig there was actual digging!

I spent most of the day learning from several intelligent men about laying out grid on difficult ground. The final and most elaborate method involved taking a point we knew was good,
stretching a string in the right direction toward some other point we hoped was good, some particular number of meters away,
putting a levelling staff (think long tall yardstick) on the lower of the two points,
stretching another string with a line level hung upon it from the higher point toward the lower point and marking where on the staff it hit at horizontal,
and then stretching a _metal_ tape, not a plastic tape or a fiberglass tape, with due attention to which edge of the tape and the staff were oriented to one another and to the nailhead of the actual point,
and then maintaining tension on the tape and dropping down points from the tape to the ground with a plumb bob.

Believe me, it was worth the trouble to have all of the meter squares within one percent of one meter in each direction and a centimeter or so in 141.2 centimeters on the diagonal. It was constantly chastening to see how a tiny error diverged into four or six or even ten centimeters a few meters away. Fragments of repressed memories from junior high floated into consciousness, 3-4-5 triangles and all.

I gained a new respect for string and line levels, and for Matt, Dick, and Mark, all of whom were very decent to work with and did not laugh at me because I could not force four unequal sides into a square.


So the grid is workable now. They set up to rotating laser level, a Thing on a tripod one vaguely recognizes as something to do with surveying. I call it the Eye of Sauron. You hold up the surveying staff with a special reflector attached and a great deal of high-pitched beeping ensues until the beam hits the bullseye. Rich and Julia took the elevation of every corner-point on the grid --a LOT of high-pitched beeping, accompanied by an angry catbird and a number of trucks dieselling past-- to allow us to know how far we shall have dug and how deeply buried the different layers of occupation are.

Throughout this whole undertaking, I've been surprised how many of the students don't know what a plumb bob is. Maybe it isn't a common item of household use, but I am not from a particularly construction-minded family and I can't remember not knowing what they were.

Here was someone who helped me write up my notes. It looked like a land-shrimp.


On the other side of the toolshed, Jen and almost everyone else opened up two 2-by-2's, two by two meter squares. They got the turf off of both of them; despite the amazing amounts of rain lately, the soil is as fine and dry as moondust. With inexperienced shovellers the dust was thick. Dick decided to go through the uppermost layers quickly, and had them take off the first 24 centimeters as one layer. They found popping beads made of plastic, some bits of iron and clinker, and pieces of flowerpot and china (whiteware and a nice brown stencilled Victorian fragment) and then a good sized piece of prehistoric pottery.
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Three more small pieces turned up, proving that at least some of the students have learned to recognize prehistoric pottery, and that the stuff is there. It remains to find out whether it is there in well-defined layers or mixed up like a tossed salad of centuries.