by Melanie Jacob
Journal Staff Writer
They only have a short window of time, but in one week the Humboldt & District Museum is hoping to get one step closer to answers while excavating at the Original Humboldt site.
"We're looking for trenches. How big is this site? We've only had this site for a while," said Jennifer Hoesgan, the museum's curator. "When you do an excavation, it's really intensive. We can't dig up 80 acres all at once."
In 1885, 465 soldiers were camped at the site as part of a supply depot during the northwest resistance. As such, Hoesgan and her archeological compadres from Western Heritage are searching for the trenches that would have been dug in order to find the accompanying artifacts. Since they began digging in 2009, they've come across an 1885 hearth that was filled with bones.
"We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how big the site is because when you have land this big, how can you tell?" said Hoesgan.
Unfortunately, one week each year is all they get since the archaeologists have to match up their schedules and constantly travel to different parts of the province.
Nevertheless, that doesn't mean they aren't able to make a lot of progress each year. Last year, they were able to identify where they should look this year and they've been making steady progress. If they can find the trenches, they can determine the importance of the site and then have a story to go along with the artifacts.
"We initially selected the site last year based on anomalies from the magnetometer survey and that gave us a guide to the best place to look below the surface," said Karmen VanderZwan, one of the archeologists on site. "It's turning out to be a shallow trench. We're not sure of the original purpose, but some garbage has accumulated in it like tin cans, nails, and bits of other metal, ceramics, and bones."
The current theory is that the shallowness of the trenches is due to it being the bottom. With land cultivation and weather elements, the tops of the trenches might have been eroded and spread out over the adjacent land. As a result, tests might be as far as they get this year in terms of understanding what might be buried under the ground.
"We've been setting up grids around the hill area and doing some ground penetrating radar (GPR) and some magnetic assessment as well," said Peggy McKeand, another one of the archeologists digging at the site. "The GPR sends radio waves and magnetic waves into the ground and it reflects off anything buried in the ground and it comes back and records that and then we get a picture of what's under the ground."
Basically, the GPR gives them a visual idea of what's under the ground without actually having to remove the dirt. The GPD penetrates in layers of certain depths so as to not confuse them by overlapping anything in the ground.
With the magnetic assessment, the team was already able to find some of the soldiers' dumps where they had buried their cans, bottles, and refuse from the camp. To build on this, the team is focusing this year on finding the outlying features so as to determine the extent of the camp. Finding the trenches and especially the latrines would be like hitting a small goldmine.
"Latrines are a wealth of information because they throw all their stuff down there that they didn't want people to find so that's where all the secrets are buried," said McKeand. "Even the officer's latrines would have different stuff down there than the regular soldiers'."
To determine how much of the trenches have been eroded and spread out and how far they extend, the soil analyzing specialties of Krista Gilliland become necessary. Gilliland's job is to analyze the layers of soil, sand, and clay composition in the ground to determine what's natural, what are man-made and all other features that might give the team more clues.
Her focus this year is what was exposed last year. She's sure she has found layers that aren't natural and this helps the team identify other areas where the same unnatural composition of soil or clay exists.
"We looked at the soil layers all down this hole (one of the units they're digging in) to see if we could see any sign of defensive earth work that's mentioned in history," said Gilliland. "But so far it's been quite elusive."
An unnatural layer, for example, would be five to six inches of clay that's usually only found under bodies of water. To find it in an area such as where the team is digging would suggest that the soldiers deposited it there deliberately to stabilize sandy trenches that were dug up as fortifications, or "defensive earth work."
Using this unnatural layer as a clue, the team can continue digging or analyzing with their equipment to see how far it goes. By confirming the dimensions of it, they will get a better understanding of where the trenches are and eventually the size of the camp.
"If you don't know what the natural soil looks like, then you can't know what the cultural (man-made) soil looks like," said Gilliland. "In the case of earlier excavations, they've exposed thinner clay layers and they've been interpreted as cultural because we didn't know what the natural soils looked like."
By analyzing more of the soil layers, Gilliland was able to differentiate natural from cultural and then use those same analyses on layers in other grid units. This then helps them steer more towards areas where there are cultural layers and bring them closer to where artifacts might be buried.
"If you don't know what you're digging into, it's really hard to interpret," said Gilliland.
Unfortunately, time is almost up for this team and work will have to be continued next year. Until then, any history buried away from human sight is just going to have to wait.
