91制片厂

It鈥檚 hard to believe it when gazing across the Thompson Hall lawn today, but back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a train ran through it. Engines chugged their way up and down the Boston and Maine Railroad corridor several times each day, running right along the western edge of the lawn and through where Demeritt Hall now stands.

What鈥檚 left of the tracks, the station and its outbuildings are photographs and remnants. The track was to its present location in 1912.

91制片厂 anthropology students spent part of last weekend searching for some of those remnants near an outcropping of spruce trees along Main Street behind James Hall.

鈥淲e are standing where the train station was, and we鈥檙e looking for this little outbuilding,鈥� says lecturer Marieka Brouwer Burg, pointing at a rectangular white structure in an historic photo, the only record of the building鈥檚 existence aside from the bits and pieces students are finding in the ground.

Four students are excavating听4 x 4 squares using trowels. They remove large pieces by hand, then dump their buckets over screens designed to sift out smaller pieces. They鈥檒l record what they find through notes, photos and videos.

鈥淲e鈥檙e finding a lot of charred wood, shards of pottery and heavily melted metal,鈥� says Kayla Kruger, a sophomore anthropology major who is brushing earth into a dustpan then pouring it into a 5-gallon bucket. She pulls out a chunk of metal about half the size of her palm.

Brouwer Burg, an archaeologist, says the metal pieces they鈥檙e finding today and have found during previous digs suggest the building was probably incinerated on purpose, perhaps around the time the tracks were moved. 鈥淚t seems as though the building burned pretty hot, hotter than it would have burned if it had naturally caught on fire.鈥�

She fingers the metal Kruger just extracted. 鈥淚t looks melted; it鈥檚 sort of slaggy. This must have been torched to a very high temperature to have these kinds of thermodynamics going on.鈥�

Brouwer Burg says the students in this class 鈥� ANTH 514: Method and Theory in Archaeology 鈥� have been waiting all semester to get out and dig. 鈥淲e spend the first third of the class talking about different theories and paradigms and how that鈥檚 developed over time,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hen we get into the methods and, at the end of the semester, we put all of that into practice and get out and try some excavation.鈥�

Little is known about this particular building, and that鈥檚 part of the point of the dig.

鈥淲hat鈥檚 wonderful about archaeology is that it can give voice to people or events that nobody thought to write down,鈥� says Brouwer Burg. 鈥淣ot everything is documented. Archaeology sheds light on pieces of history.鈥�

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Interested in archaeology?

ANTH 411: Global Perspectives on the Human Condition 鈥� An Introduction to Anthropology will be offered during . 听