Thursday 14 June 2012

June 13th: Leave No Trace

Out in the field today Rebecca, Ryan, and Mark completed packing all of the gear at McKenzie Creek. One truckload was all it took to get everything back to campus at Capilano University. Jasmin stayed on site to work on the rock feature but did not find anything significant so she eventually backfilled the unit. After the units were all closed and everything was packed in the truck, the crew did a final sweep of the site to ensure that we left as little evidence of our presence as possible. They were careful to remove any flagging tape from the area and dismantled the stairs into the site that we had built. At noon the field crew headed to the lab to unload the gear.

 Rebecca shines in this photo of the field crew breaking down our shelters today.

An intersection of two roads. The one on the left was made by a local company about 1900 and initially served as a logging skid road to access and remove the 500 yr old trees. The one on the right was a solid cedar plank road built by Japanese about 1918. By 1920, each road was a lined with small cabins to house the Japanese. 

Jasmin's excavation unit which we have been referring to as the "rock feature".

Bob mentioned that Willow showed him an old book (from 1960) on Japanese houses and gardens. The book showed a garden feature that may be similar to Jasmin's rock feature. It's a small, open-sided gazebo-like structure, with a wooden floor, open walls, and wood roof and water close by. We are not certain, but we think it's likely that the rocks that make up the walls of Jasmin's unit were used as a foundation for a structure a hundred years ago, similar to the one Willow found in the book.


At the lab, Evan continued with artifact cataloging, Alexis on level bag analysis, Meghan with illustrations (of the McKenzie Creek site as it may have looked in 1920) as well as another artifact drawing. Jasmin joined Willow on soil analysis while Dini worked on artifact displays (for the university as well as public educational presentations). Kitty worked on compiling her raw data for the Japanese and personal artifacts report. Rebecca and Mark took on the task of cleaning all of the field equipment with high pressure hoses and scrub brushes. Ryan (after his fieldwork) and Spencer M worked on their projects at home for the day.


A line drawing that I did of a Japanese medicine bottle found by Mark in the "cabin" area of the McKenzie Creek site. Kitty told me that the writing on the bottle are two versions of Japanese characters, one of them much more simple than the other.

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