Backyard Archaeology: Documentation of the Artifacts

BACKYARD ARCHEOLOGY
By
Institution
Backyard Archeology
Site gridding and documentation entail the most fundamental parts of archeology, that aids in getting information concerning the past activities, and life of the population that inhabited that particular site. This aroused an inspiration to conduct the same in the backyard in order to get accustomed to the practice and challenges of archeology as documented in this report.
Description of the site
The potential site for the study is a large field bordering a permanent stone building on the northern direction and a stream on the southern direction. The site is still fresh from human activities such as walking and playing depicted by the exposed earth surface. The works of nature is also evident; sheet and splash erosions have highly exposed the surface with small reels and depressions evident from continuous exposure. The site is a 50 meters by 40 meters field with an elevation of about 15o tapering towards the stream. There is a footpath across the field sometimes used by cyclists, and motorcyclists.
Detailed exploration of the site shows the ground to be soft and easily dug using a shovel, or hoe for a shorter depth. The playground is hard in some places and the fringes have a grass carpet especially on the entire length of the stream. The soil contains small pieces of stone flakes, iron pieces, potsherds, stones, small rocks, clay deposits, and wood fragments. Some of the materials in the site appear old and rusted, while others are broken and require fitting together to find out the correct mapping of what they are. Additionally, the backyards site has soiled plastic pieces, tins and bags slightly exposed from the ground. The division of the site into equal parts and segregating the definite areas according to the type of artifacts present can be useful in unearthing the clue behind the materials present in the site.
Documentation of the artifacts
There are several artifacts unearthed from the site that are of archeological significance. These artifacts includes metal parts, potsherds, stone flakes, rocks, stones, wood fragments, old garments, plastic pieces, broken glasses, charcoal pieces and small bones. The artifacts come in different shapes and sizes. The glass pieces collected from the site were mostly rectangular in shapes with some triangular, while others aggregated to irregular shapes. Some of the glass pieces were thick, coming from big bottles or glass vessels, while most were thin. They were mostly transparent with some colored in red, green, maroon, and orange. Some of the glass pieces appeared round in shape; a sign they emanated from bottles or round vessels, though some had clear indication of being broken bottles. The glass pieces were few in numbers, mostly found on the fringes of the field, especially near the stream.
There were considerable amount of potsherds in the site, coming in different sizes and shapes. Most were 2-3 centimeters in width and almost 50 grams in weight. The potsherds were brown in color owing to the soil covering their surface and black spots due to burning. The fragments of the potsherds splattered on the area in cluster forms shows that some pots were broken in the area. Either this was due to human habitation or human beings carried them to the area. There were different types of metallic pieces from iron, aluminium, and co...