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Watching a dig at Fort Vancouver in 1998 got me hooked on reading dirt layers
I was 14 and tagged along with my uncle who was doing volunteer work at Fort Vancouver in Washington state. A grad student showed me how a dark stripe in the soil wall was a burned floor from 1845, and I could actually see where the fire happened. Before that I thought archaeology was just finding arrowheads, but she explained that most of the story comes from dirt, seeds, and trash pits. I came back the next two summers and helped screen buckets, which is way less exciting than movies make it look. Now 25 years later I still stop and stare whenever I see exposed soil in a road cut. Anyone else here get started by accident like that?
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andrew8547d ago
Wow, hold on, a burned floor from 1845 isn't quite right. Fort Vancouver was a Hudson's Bay Company fur trading post, and the big fire that took out most of the buildings happened in 1866, well after the fur trade era ended. That dark stripe you saw was probably a hearth or a burned structure from a later period, or maybe just an old fire pit. The fort's main stockade got rebuilt and moved around over the years too, so dating a single burn layer to 1845 is the kind of thing a grad student might say loose in the moment and then regret. Still, that's a cool way to catch the bug, dirt really does tell the story better than arrowheads most days.
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