[Music]
Rock Hall was originally built in the
1760s or 1770s. Today it's a museum so
it's known locally as the Rock Hall
Museum. The students are looking for any
sort of remnants, artifacts, or what we
call features that might date to the
time period around the time of the
construction of the house but more
importantly the same time in which
people of color both enslaved and free
lived in the out buildings that are now
depicted on some surveys from about 1820
or 1830. So right now we're on the second strata
which is the second soil type of the
excavation. So far we've been here about
a week and a half. When we were first
started digging it was a lot of modern
stuff was coming up. These finely pieces
of plastic and the candy wrappers and
things like that on the way down and
then the switch that over to what they
were using in the past where it's all
glass and porcelain and different pieces
of stuff that we don't use as much today
and today actually I found a pipe stem
which is used for smoking tobacco back
in like the 1500s. I just think it's
really nice to be able to find these
artifacts and potentially put it towards
a story that wasn't really told through
history.
Right now we're in the middle of summer
session one for class Anthropology 33: Archaeological Field Methods
When we took the archaeology class it was all in
a classroom and it was interesting but
it was it's a lot better to be able to
go out in the field I'd be like this is
the things that we're finding and like
this is how we put it in the total
station and this is how we like bag it
and this is what we do in the lab so I
just think it's really fun to be able to
experience all this in person. The
summer class has been really fun so far.
It's really great to be with other
Hofstra students and it's been a lot of
fun you just get your hands dirty and
just be actually doing the archaeology.
By doing archaeology, we get to find
those things, the things they used and
broke and discarded in the past and
piece them back together in a way that
helps us tell a story about their lives. It tells you so much about who has been
here before you and how you got to the
point you are today and I think it's
really important to see that sort of
lineage and that change over time to
understand how humans have an affect on
everything.
[Music]
