Deep Sea Diver History Speaks

[Elia Khensamphanh]

Asan intern in the Manuscript Reading Room, one of my favorite tasks was answering reference questions. In doing so, I found myself moseying through many historical diaries, which frequently evoke elementary school memories.

Diaries are often the best true representation of a person in history. They illustrate the mundane acts of day-to-day life, which speak to our shared humanity. But they also highlight the unusual and awesome moments a person may encounter in life. Diaries shed light on the diversity of a time period and provide stories beyond what may initially be learned in a classroom.

In the spirit of my introductory story, I will begin our diary journey on April 7, 1863. The author is not unfamiliar, but the heroic Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross and, among other distinctions, a nurse during the Civil War. The Manuscript Division holds many of her diaries, most just like the one I have chosen: pocket-sized. This one came with a matching, and darling, pocket-sized pencil; I am inspired to buy one for myself.

Cullen was an eloquent and prolific poet and novelist. One opens his diary and expects beautifully written and woven stories of life and its consequences. This is not the case. Cullen often wrote matter-of-factly about his day. On January 15, 1928, for example, he accompanies his fiance, Nina Yolande DuBois, to Baltimore for a tea where she will meet with her prospective bridesmaids. He explains this and not much more. For he says there are:

Maybe Cullen saved all of his creativity for poems and novels, or maybe he was just too busy. But I am grateful he graces us with a hint to the rhythms of his days in early 1928. It is interesting, nonetheless, and shows that he was so very human.

After a day of rest, Douglass visits Pompeii on January 4, 1887. There are two sentences that struck me in this particular entry. While these diaries are not ancient, what Douglass has written about Pompeii, I believe, best describes why I am so interested in history, why I enjoyed my time at the Library of Congress, and maybe even why I love reading the diaries themselves. While I have read history books and heard history lessons, nothing quite matches having the primary sources at your fingertips:

While the Library of Congress holds the microfilm of the Countee Cullen Papers, the physical collection can be found at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University: Countee Cullen papers, 1900-1947 Amistad Research Center.

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It is a space for musings informed by expert knowledge in all the areas that the History Department reaches. These informal essays offer personal perspectives on history and yield insights into the past, present, and future.

There is no reason to hide the fact that historians, like other experts, can suppress inconvenient evidence, under- or overstate significance, and coat incoherent arguments in academic jargon. However, when we teach critical methodologies, source criticism, and public engagement, we give our students the ability to evaluate claims about history on their own terms. Clio reminds us to be responsible scholars.

Claire Hood: It was my first time traveling alone, so that was a fun adventure to fly internationally for the first time alone and go to do archaeology. I've always been curious about human existence, and that's the draw for history and specifically archaeology, of comparing the ancient past to the present and how a lot of things influence one another.

SE: Was it really hot?

CH: Every day? Yeah. So, there was a record-setting heat wave called Cerberus, and that happened during Week 2. And so, it changed our digging schedule. We started digging at 6 a.m., until 2 p.m. so that we could beat the heat. And one day was really fascinating because there were wildfires and there was a wildfire on site. And so, there were firefighters, like, just over a hill putting out a fire. And we could see the smoke over the hill. And we were just digging at the site. And we could only dig at the site because the firefighters were there.

SE: That's crazy. What was that experience like? Were you scared at all? Plus, it's like an ancient site; were you nervous about destroying something by accident?

CH: I mean, there's always nerves when using like a large tool.

SE: What were the tools that you used?

CH: Topsoil is the upper layers of dirt. The amount changes depending on where in the trench you are digging. Normally there were multiple inches. Probably there were some areas where the trench was like 3 feet deep, and in other areas where the trench was like 6 inches deep, depending on how much topsoil there was and where the walls and other artifacts were located.

SE: How can you tell when the type of soil changes? Are you picking at it and the soil suddenly changes?

CH: Yes. So, as you're pickaxing, you have to be really aware of what you're pickaxing, and how all of the soil changes happen.

SE: Was it difficult to do this given the heat wave?

CH: Yeah. It was extremely strenuous work. Extremely strenuous physical work while having like a mental game of paying attention to the dirt you're digging and what's in the dirt and paying attention to like pottery shards and soil changes. And we had like 4 keywords that we would use to describe the soil. And [we had to pay attention to notice] if there was a soil change.

SE: What were these words? Are they Italian?

CH: They're not Italian. I can't remember them exactly. I should know, something like coarse, silt, sand. [But these are the descriptors]and then you would also identify the color. You are constantly calling over your trench supervisor to look at things and being really aware and sensitive to what you're digging.

SE: That's so cool. How was your experience learning history outside of a classroom setting? Instead of reading and discussing something, how was it different to have dirt in front of your face? What was it like having that form of history?

CH: I would say it was a cool discovery. The element of discovery, I think was really cool, to unearth, for example, a wall that hasn't been seen in thousands of years.

SE: What were you thinking about as you were digging? What was it like uncovering records of people's lives thousands of years ago? Well, I don't know about thousands, actually what was the time frame?

CH: It was from 300 BC.

SE: Oh, that's so old. That's crazy. So that was right before the Hellenistic period.

CH: Yeah, around the Hellenistic period. It was almost hard to have perspective on how old the pieces of pottery were. They were thousands of years old, but it was really grounding to be able to pull out a piece of pottery and take it to the trench supervisor and look at the thread on it and identify where it was from.

SE: That's crazy.

CH: And during lunch, we would wash pottery and sort pottery occasionally. We didn't do it too often because we didn't find a lot of pottery we could save.

SE: What determines if you can keep the pottery?

CH: It depends on what level of soil it's in because that's how old it is. One issue with the site we were digging at was that the topsoil had been used for farming, so there was evidence that a plow had gone through, and we found horse teeth and bones.

SE: Was it chilling to find post-mortem objects?

(What was it like finding dead stuff? Was it creepy?)

CH: I would say washing it afterwards was like the creepier part; removing the dirt from the bones. But I would say finding bone was one of the coolest parts of the things we found.

SE: How was the experience of uncovering stuff physically?

CH: There's a certain level of exhaustion that you feel the whole time, and so it depends on the task because there were a lot of tasks that were like trench maintenance. You're not necessarily going to find something when you're scarping a wall. But it's super important to have a scarp that is 90 degrees (flat base and side). But [at the same time] you understand that though this task of scarping may not be the most fun, because I'm not going to discover much, it's still an integral part of how the trench functions.

CH: Yeah, I personally loved scarping because of how scarping is where you make flat 90-degree walls on the side of the trench. So you take a hand pick and you're just making it as flat as possible, and so that allows you to see soil changes in the layers.

SE: That sounds like a nice, not tedious task, but it's something that's small and you can accomplish so you feel better afterwards?

CH: Yeah. Except for when your trench supervisor tells you to do the whole trench.

SE: What are your takeaways from this experience?

CH: There's a level of gratitude for academic work that doesn't require physical labor. Thinking about typical courses, it's a whole lot less demanding to be reading a book in the comfort of my own home than it is to be shoveling dirt. But it's also less thrilling to read a book. It's more thrilling to be in the field and doing something that's never been done, and to have the curiosity. If I weren't a curious person, it would have been a lot more challenging.

SE: What did you eat? I remember hearing something about eggs.

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