I had the opportunity to contribute to archaeological projects at the Presidio in San Francisco, California. Being able to work locally was significant because it allowed me to better imagine what events have taken place in my home region. Also, having spoken to several archaeologists who had worked in the area, I had high hopes for seeing the Presidio for myself and discovering something notable. I ended up staying in San Francisco for hours after my shift was over, talking with archaeologists and exploring the site.
The state of the site is ongoing. The meadow where the archaeological sites are located once housed the American quarters where General Pershing was stationed in the early 1900s. The Archaeology Lab is located at the Presidio in San Francisco. The land here is divided into layers where numerous layers expose many eras of California’s history, all the way down to the ER layer, below which there is no human activity (past 6-7 millenia ago). Though the city of San Francisco was officially founded in 1776 by Spanish explorers, artifacts go as far back as around 6-7 thousand years ago when the first humans inhabited the area. However, artifacts that date between 1850 and the late 1900s are most commonly found, as San Francisco truly became a populated city after the Gold Rush began in 1848. The process here begins in the site where excavation extracts large objects and buckets of sediments containing smaller materials that need to be filtered out. Every aspect of the site is photographed professionally and preserved via photogrammetry. By joining a series of hundreds of photos, a digital, 3d copy of the site is recorded forever. Buckets of sediments are brought up to the lab for sifting, where volunteers filter through for valuable artifacts. Once all artifacts are isolated and sorted, everything goes to the lab for archaeologists to study. I participated in sifting along with several other volunteers.
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