Stratigraphy

On my way home from work, I stopped at the hardware store and bought a shovel. Then I headed for the backyard and started digging.

It's been years since I did this for a living, but digging holes is apparently like riding a bike: you never forget. My arms and shoulders still remember exactly the leverage and pressure it takes to dig a round hole, 18 inches wide and 30 inches deep, the size of a standard archaeological test pit. Conveniently enough, this is also the size of hole the Internet recommends using to seat a hammock-post.

After 10 or 15 minutes, I started to notice what came out of the earth. At first, it was just adobe soil: incredibly hard, the kind of soil I used to sharpen my shovel for. A foot or so down, the earth became softer and darker. I bent down and rubbed it between my fingers. It had the texture of ash. I slammed the shovel down again and again, chopping a straight sided round hole into the earth. I cut through tree roots and levered intrusive rocks out of my way.

Once upon a time, I would have made this hole perfect. I would have documented the changes in soil that marked habitation layers or fire pits. I would have screened all the dirt for artifacts, and saved the ones I found in numbered paper bags.

I feel incredibly smug that even without all that effort, I found three pieces of broken glass, a fragment of a flower pot, and a very rusted but still perfectly recognizable square-cut nail.