http://bhoffman.edublogs.org Archaeology Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:11:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The field phase of our Methodist church excavation is officially done. Yesterday, Hamline's Grounds Services hauled back all our excavated dirt and filled in our trench. No backfilling by hand for us. My students will never truly appreciate their luck in missing this traditional part of archaeology. We are now in ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/11/20/church-archaeology-the-lab-phase/ St. Paul weather at 3:53 PM (Overcast 37 °F / 3 °C) Today's cold weather was well timed. No one in the class seemed disappointed to finish the excavations on a day when the blustery north winds made it feel almost like winter. Personally I ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/11/07/a-cold-end-to-the-church-dig/ Stained glass shards found along the church foundation. We're finding a lot of small shards of colored glass. We believe these are from the rose windows. The interesting aspect is the diversity of colors - mostly greens and yellows, but also blue and amber colors. I just held them up ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/11/01/sunlight-after-80-years-of-darkness/ Slowly, very slowly, the church ruin is coming into focus. After six weeks of digging (well, really we've worked about 45 hours on site) we are starting to see the scene of what remained in 1926 after the demolition work. We see sections of wall pushed over and bricks strewn ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/10/26/a-bit-of-glass-a-burned-brick-signs-of-the-fire/ Wow, what a beautiful fall day! Plenty of sunshine and plenty of wind. The leaves were swirling around us and filling the pits as we dug. It felt really good to be outside doing archaeology on a day like today. We continue to uncover more of the foundation. It has emerged ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/10/23/an-emerging-foundation/ One of last week's highlights was being joined in our excavation by some fifty 6th graders from Hancock Elementary school. It was a great experience to work side by side with such enthusiastic kids. As expected, we found some nails, ceramics, clinker, bricks, and lots of worms. The only glitch in ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/10/17/digging-with-6th-graders/ A drenching rain brought today's excavation to a screeching halt. I wasn't too disappointed, though, since we were near the end of our class period and we'd been very productive before the rain. We are now largely done with the public component of our project and really focused on the ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/10/16/rained-out/ Our Homecoming open dig was a lot of fun. Our timing was fortunate, with one of the nicest days we've seen this week. I was impressed by our returning volunteers - they knew what to do and started working as soon as they arrived. I had it easy. I just ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/10/13/more-sunshine-and-an-enamel-cup-hamline-neighborhood-archaeology/ We're expanding our excavations. At the church site we have added a "T" extension on the west end of our trench that will expose a longer section of the church's foundation. We want to better document the building's location and construction. We also are hoping to find more artifacts - ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/10/04/the-red-brick-house/ We found the church! At least we found a possible foundation located where the west wall of the church should be. It's not as substantial a construction as we expected - so we have a lot of questions to answer and more digging to do. Archaeology almost always works this ... http://bhoffman.edublogs.org/2007/09/26/we-hit-the-wall/