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DIGGING IN THE DIRT
by Allison Devers
This is a story about the university.
After spending the past summer excavating an archaeological site in Louisa County, Virginia, I returned to U.Va. to find that my five senses were more aware of their surroundings.
The Dig: Touch and Taste
She said, "Lick, and if it sticks ..." As suggested, I lifted the fragment of pottery to my mouth, and as the ceramic touched my tongue, despite the grit and grunge, I felt the texture of the two hundred-year-old surface stick. For me, it was a new technique learned and a question answered. I went camping for the first time this summer, in attendance of Alison Bell's Louisa County Summer Field School. Bell, a graduate student, is basing much of her dissertation information around the site. I helped excavate the site of an 18th century home originally owned by Nathaniel Dickenson, a man with a number of slaves and a house on a hill. The birds woke me up daily -- always before Bell's 7 a.m. wake up call, "Mornin' everybody ..." I fought their chirping; I tried to hold onto my sleep. But somnolence is not in store for those sleeping outdoors. Unadventurous campers' generators often kept me awake late into the night, so did the stars and the fireflies I saw during 3:30 a.m. walks to the Prince's Porta-john. Chef Boyardee for breakfast, caramel corncakes and peanut butter for lunch, the local Mineral Restaurant for dinner. The significant learning opportunities came in the field. I didn't know it then, but I learned to apply my five senses to the study of archaeology. My eyes were turned toward the center of the earth. I learned to look for century old lead shots half the size of a pea, while troweling through pounds and pounds of dirt. By the end of the five weeks, I could usually distinguish the untouched subsoil from the disturbed and occupied. The disturbed soil is haunted, it holds artifacts and has voices that tell pieces of stories. The undisturbed subsoil lets the archaeologist know where the stories end. Subsoil shows where the breath of man has not entered; at subsoil there is silence. I kept a fairly consistent daily journal every night. The entries were brief, due to my exhaustion and often low flashlight battery. The blue notebook was really more of a list, enabling me to look back upon my memory of dirty fingernails and recall the bird bones and brick flecks I found. I knew I wouldn't long remember the important specifics of a day shoveling, troweling, and mapping.
During the dig we excavated two quadrants of the Dickenson cellar, as well as a trench that contained stairs. Every student who participated in the dig must now have their personal favorite discoveries, mine being the combed slipware hoard that lay above the stairs. The concentration of a couple hundred fragments of colonial pottery was like discovering a dragon's lair, with all the gold. A nail, a button, a broken dish, bowl, or rusted hinge never looked so enticing until I pulled them out of the ground and started realizing that they each are a part of a story, the cultural landscape, and the archaeological record. Pig's teeth were never so compellingly gross. I gained what historical archaeologist and U.Va. professor James Deetz wrote in his book, In Small Things Forgotten: "an appreciation for the simple details of past existence, which escape historical mention ... for simple artifacts ..." The University: Sight and Smell
When I returned to the university, I experienced a bit of culture shock. Instead of smelling smothered-out camp fires and spilt Gatorade juice sticking to my skin, I smelled repainted apartments and Mr. Clean-ed linoleum floors. As I made my daily walk to Cabell for my summer French class, I took more time than I would have normally to look at my feet as they shuffled through the grass. I began looking closely at the structure of the university, the ever expanding nature of a very historical site. On my way to class early one morning, as I passed in front of Brooks Hall, something surprising revealed itself. It had just rained heavily the night before, and there was plenty of run-off from the worn dirt paths around Grounds. Right in front of my big toe was a pottery sherd. An artifact from the past was lying on top of the ground directly across the street from Mincer's. The piece of unrefined stoneware was most certainly colonial. I left the ceramic there with much resentment, knowing that it could be kicked into the road, or broken by a steel-toed foot any day. I left it because of the rules an archaeologist is supposed to follow. Leave the artifacts until there is a moment to learn from them, don't remove them from their archaeological context. Since I saw the ceramic artifact, my attitude toward U.Va's treatment of its history became wary; I decided that their concern was lacking. Although everyone on campus knows Thomas Jefferson's legacy backwards and forwards, despite the heavy treatment of traditions at our university, it looked to me that no one was interested in the buried stories that were waiting to be acknowledged. The university maintains a beautiful landscape for all to enjoy, but I wondered if people still recognized the Grounds as an opportunity to discover and preserve pieces of colonial history. A little known fact to most students is that Jefferson was the first archaeologist in America. He methodically dug up ancient Indian burial mounds, hoping to understand the function of the aboriginal sites. Thomas Jefferson was fascinated with his former tenants of Charlottesville, Virginia. To a degree, students and faculty are also fascinated with our school's depth of history. We look back and acknowledge the previous peoples, lifestyles, traditions, and stories at the university. However, when I took a step back and looked at our expanding university, I saw very little concern for what was contained in the earth. I found it shocking that there wasn't a full-time staff at the university to focus on the correct handling of artifacts, or the responsibility of surveying before construction on historic land. Instead, the university relies upon contracted archaeologists to do the work, taking away much opportunity for all students to become educated, interested, or involved in the archaeological process at the university. Unfortunately, U.Va. also leans on the professors in the Archaeology Department to conduct some surveys for them, which can take valuable time away from the professor's own field of expertise. I saw everything as negative. I was completely disturbed by the in's and out's of the contracted summer dig of the Anatomical Theatre previously located in the front of Alderman library. I realize now that I was on many points uninformed and unjustifiably judgmental. The More Complete Truth: Sound I went seeking validation from Stephen Plog, my new Southwest Archaeology Professor, because I had his office hours on my syllabus, and because he is an Assistant Dean. I thought he would give me two sides of the story -- both from his standpoint as an archaeologist, and also as a member of the university that understands the logistics and bureaucracy behind the actions of U.Va. He would know the inter-workings of the university. Did he change my opinions? Absolutely. I repeatedly asked fairly biased questions. "But, doesn't the university ignore basic archaeological principal when they build a new staircase, but doesn't the university ..." To most of my questions, he was straightforward and obviously honest. He pointed out that the university does sponsor quite a few archaeology field schools (which I should have considered), historic as well as prehistoric. Also, the university does not need to have round the clock archaeology digs; just because the information is in the ground doesn't mean it is the appropriate time to dig it up. The time spent and cost processing of the information would be immense. He also informed me that contract archaeology can be complete, precise, and respected; it is not always invalid or careless work.
The Anatomical Theater: Final Thoughts Despite the speedy excavation of the Anatomical Theater -- a building Jefferson designed to be the classroom for the medical students at U. Va. -- the information retrieved from the site will obviously benefit the university. The building was completed in 1826 and demolished in 1938 to make room for Alderman Library. A sign marking the site reads, "The investigations will help establish how much of the original foundations remain intact, providing a footprint for the location and dimensions of the building walls. The work will also increase our knowledge of nineteenth-century building practices. In addition, we hope to recover fragments of the upper stories not removed during demolition and perhaps other nineteenth century objects related to the buildings history." The intentions appear quite valid when, in fact, the dirt was removed with a backhoe and not all of it was screened for artifacts. So a complete picture of the Theatre was probably not established. Plog explained to me that the layers of dirt above the Theatre were most likely fill, and therefore the artifacts would be out of context. Still, the artifacts would have been interesting to the members of our university, as well as visitors, and now the ground is even more disturbed. I believe it would be welcomed by all, to view the pieces of the past as they came out of the ground. Presently at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, archaeologists are conducting an ongoing public dig at the Fort of Jamestown. The excavation is being funded in part by the National Geographic Society, whose future coverage of the dig will most likely provide thousands of readers with new information about how the first colonials survived. It is, of course, a justified dig. When I visited the site as a field trip this summer I watched in astonishment as artifacts were being sifted from the dirt and laid out for all to see. Eric Deetz, a member of the archaeological staff, mentioned how captivated people were by what was being retrieved daily, hourly, and during each minute of the dig. The tourists felt close to those artifacts because they were there watching them be uncovered. Observers were completely tied to the past. I can't help but see similar possibilities at U.Va.; the landscape would be disrupted but wonderfully interesting. I now know that the university need not employ a staff at U.Va. to do a complete job with retaining the historical information at the university, I can see how the university's money has been understandably directed elsewhere. But still, I have a lot of emotion for what our Academical Villiage holds beneath the grass and brick pathways. Stephen Plog backed me up on my opinion, "You could get a substantial amount of archaeological information around Grounds." Although he allayed the fears I had about U.Va.'s practices, he agreed it would be beneficial to hire an archaeologist to conduct the necessary surveys around Grounds. I suppose even though I now realize U.Va. is not being negligent, I am still surprised that U.Va. is not living up to the standards which it seems to have set for itself, to be a historical Mecca, to draw visitors to Thomas Jefferson's 19th century cultural playground, to offer them his own personal philosophies. Jefferson would have been proud to see our interest in the past, as he recognized that the present is linked to the historical past. As one of the first large scale architectural sites in America, U.Va. currently focuses on the grandness of its existence, not on the small pieces that would offer an even more complete picture of the university. If we had more interest in archaeology, or in preserving our grounds -- to save them for further study, we would be closer to Jefferson's own ideologies. Perhaps I am being too romantic, even selfish. I am looking for my own dream. But how could I not, after working for a season in the sun, crouching toward the ground with trowel in hand. My senses evolved because I was helping to piece missing fragments of lost history together.
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