Today was the team’s first day working at Sacred Heart Cemetery. The morning was cool and cloudy, but we were all ready and excited to work. We made it to the cemetery by 7:45 and met with the team from Texas State who we will be working alongside to tackle multiple areas of interests in the cemetery. We unloaded all of the equipment and went over the gameplan, and the teams were separated into areas.
The UIndy team was given quite a large area, but we are not intimidated by the work that lies ahead! We decided to split our section into two smaller sections to start, and began probing our first section. The first thing we noticed was that the soil consistency varied, being soft in some places but more firm in others. Our first trench revealed several large roots that the team had to work around. Once the main trench was dug, Sidney & Arden began digging a smaller trench perpendicular to the first while Dr. Latham & Sammi continued clearing the first. My job consisted of emptying buckets. SO. MANY. BUCKETS. To be honest I didn’t mind the work. Every member of the team was working just as hard, and I think everyone who came by to see the work we were doing agreed.
By the end of the day, we had dug our trenches down to about 60cm deep and have about half of our first subsection explored. We will continue this section tomorrow so we can be confident that we have thoroughly explored this area. I am very proud of our team, as this was our first time working together in this capacity, and I feel that we all jumped right in with the work that we have to do. We found a natural flow to the digging, and we reminded each other to take plenty of water & snack breaks. Even though we are all incredibly sore at the moment, we know that the work we are doing is important and it will all be worth it in the end.
-Angela
