This fall, 15 students enrolled in Archaeology 1900: "The Archaeology of College Hill" have started work on the second year of excavation at the First Baptist Church. Excavations at the church - the oldest Baptist church in the United States - are part of an ongoing collaboration between the church and the University's anthropology department, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World.
The class, which is taught by Joukousky Institute doctoral candidate Kate Marino GS, focuses on unearthing clues to the main uses of the church's meeting house in its early days. The church was built in 1775 and served as the third site for the original First Baptist Church founded in 1638 by Roger Williams, Rhode Island's founding father.
This year's excavation seeks to build on last year's findings, which were mostly ceramics, coins and buttons dating from as early as the mid-1800s. Marino said last year's most exciting discovery was a near-complete animal skeleton found near the front of the church, which the team suspects is the remnants of a pig roast. Quahog shells were also found near the side of the church, which the class concluded were evidence of frequent clambakes. The church's written record also verifies social gatherings such as clambakes throughout the church's history.
"This work opens up a new window to the history of the area. We're trying to expand upon what was in the written record," Marino said.
The class spends the first six weeks of the semester excavating and digging at the site and the remaining weeks analyzing artifacts in the lab. Marino and her team have isolated six test pits to perform their work, changing some of last year's locations after they yielded poor results. Though digging this semester has only just begun, Marino said she hopes to uncover evidence of American Indians in the region, although last year's findings did not yield any.
The class, which took only a few months to organize, began the project last fall largely thanks to the cooperation of the First Baptist Church, said Susan Alcock, professor of classics and director of the Joukowsky Institute. The church has been enthusiastic about collaborating with the University in the past - Brown's annual Baccalaureate ceremony for graduating seniors is held there - and the class served as a bridge between the University and the congregation, she added.
"I'd really like to thank the church - they should be acknowledged. This (project) really came from them," Alcock said.
Though the class is immediately focused on determining past uses of the church building, the larger continuing project of "Archaeology of College Hill" is to contribute to a greater understanding of College Hill's past. One of Alcock's aspirations is for the class to forge stronger bonds between the greater Providence area and the Brown community.
Alcock said she hopes to continue the project in the future for these reasons and for the rich experience it provides archaeology students.
"I've been delighted by the range of experiences that the students have been able to have. They've looked at aerial imagery of the site, they've done remote sensing, they've done historical research," Alcock said. "It's been more than just sinking holes into the ground."
For Madeline Ray '10, the course is everything Alcock described plus the opportunity to learn practical skills such as excavation. "I like digging up stuff. I used to dig up stuff in my backyard at home, and I decided to do it for real here," she said.
Cindy Swain '09 was drawn to the class by its hands-on opportunities as much as its historical aspect. "I had done some fieldwork before, and I wanted to do more. It just seemed like a fun class, and it was a good change of pace," she said.
The semester's findings will culminate in a final publication. Each student will contribute a five-minute oral presentation that will be combined with video footage from the semester in a final DVD and presented to the church congregation. These may also be posted online. The results of last year's investigations were published in a paper titled "Churchyard Archaeology: Archaeological Investigations at the First Baptist Church in America."
The class, which meets to excavate on Mondays afternoons, welcomes visitors to the site to observe the process. Students can also read field notes and look at photos from the dig site at the course's page on the Joukowsky Institute's Web site. Marino hopes that one of the results of the class will be to get more students interested and exposed to archaeological methods.
"Compared to Rome and Portugal, this is way different," Marino said. "This place isn't isolated from the real world - it's right here."
