Preparing the Site

Once the sod was removed from our site, Andrea Richardson, the Archaeologist, selected a baseline running North and South. She divided the baseline into metre sections and built squares out from there.

"We had an archaeologist who came to help us dig. Her name was Andrea Richardson and she told us the proper way to measure out the area into units. Each unit was 1 meter square. Then we came back indoors and decided which unit each digging team would have. Andrea suggested that every other unit remain intact so that the strings would be secured."

Grade 5 student

Video of how we prepared the site so we could record where the artifacts were found.
( 5.1 Mb Quicktime movie)

Each square is called a unit and Andrea decided which of the units to open. Each unit was split into four quadrants (NW, NE, SW, SE). Each of us got to dig one quadrant so we could keep track of the artifacts we found.The grade four's had units 9 – 15 and the grade five's had units 2 – 8. Unit 16 was worked by a team from both grades.

We only opened fifteen units because we decided not to open Unit #1 because it was right in the way where people were going to walk to go the the sifting stations.

Unit #2 moved to the East because there was a large surface find (the pipe).

Unit #16 was opened because there was a large artifact in Unit #15 at level 3. As it turns out Unit #16 had a surprise, a very large metal artifact that was partly in Unit 12.

"Working on this archaeological dig was very official. We had to split the area into meter squares and then split those squares into squares or quadrants. It is really different than just grabbing a shovel and digging. "

Grade 4 student - Unit 10