Today we went back to learning with a long, hard day of archaeology. We got to be the first group to see what lay beneath the soil of the old king house which was knocked down in the 1940s. We found plates, spoons, pieces of glass, marbles, a toy car, and an old battery. We also visited a dump site where the forest floor was littered with tons of plates, glasses, bottles, and other types of glassware. It was really cool to be working on an actual archaeological dig and learn the methods and tools used by the professionals. One method was where we would dig small deep holes to sample the artifact density and see if we would want to do more digging there later.
Lunch was had at a Native American rock shelter near the dig site. There we were tasked with finding the cave painting on it. Turns out the cave art was of a man. It was extremely faded and pretty hard to see unless someone points it out. After lunch we worked on the site for about another two hours and came back to wash the artifacts and try to figure out what they were. Some things that looked like one thing, turned out to be completely different. For instance, what we thought was a nail turned out to be an old chicken bone that had somehow been turned slightly green.
Later, when we had everything cleaned off, everyone got together to try and date some of the artifacts based on words or makers marks on them. Most thing we dated turned out to be from the 1920s-1940s. We discovered that we had found an old toothpaste bottle for something called “Teel” which was the precursor to Crest. One of the bottles found was and old historic whiskey bottle by Frankfort Distilleries Inc. And on some items we could find almost exact pictures of the artifact, like the toy car. Tomorrow group two gets to continue the dig and I know we all can’t wait to see what they unearth!
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