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Thursday, May 26, 2005

Dig, Day 6. Work continues, with paperwork slowing things down. We fill out a lot of forms to record everything we dig, assigning numbers to artifact bags, soil layers, features, units, and so on. We also draw maps, profiles, and cross sections as well as photograph in black and white, color, and digital. We document everything carefully, because once you dig something up it can never be dug up again the same way.

The house we are working inside is known as the Triplex because it has three rooms along the street.


The front of the Triplex.

The north room was built in the late 1860s and two more rooms were added in the 1870s. The building was the home of Juan and Soledad and their three daughters. Soledad worked as a seamstress after her husband died. One of her daughters was well-known for making Mexican wedding dresses.

The 1860s room has a saguaro rib ceiling.

Saguaro rib ceiling.

One of the 1870s rooms has packing crates re-used in the ceiling, wood was scarce and valuable in Tucson and every scrap was carefully used.

Looking straight up at some of the packing crates.

The house is going to be a museum for a new park. After we complete our excavations it will be ready for the final restoration work.

Not many exciting finds today. An unexpected discovery was a pile of bottles in the backyard, barely buried in the dirt. They probably date to the 1940s or 1950s.

Bottles.

The dry climate has preserved some of the bottle labels.

A. B. C. Beer.

In other news, I got a bit dehydrated today and have an annoying headache. I work hard at getting enough water, but sometimes I just forget as I rush around trying to get things done and encourage people to work faster.

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