From marsh to Yard
It’s been a bittersweet Thanksgiving week for students and archaeologists digging in Harvard Yard. Sweet because they found a major feature — a covered stone drainage ditch buried four and a half feet down that was likely an early step in transforming what was a low, wet, marshy place to the high and dry Yard of today. Bitter because the find, thought to date to the 1700s, came just days before the end of the autumn digging season, when Harvard’s landscaping crew fills in the pit until the dig resumes again nearly two years from now. “There’s a certain pain that comes with this profession,” instructor Christina Hodge said, looking thoughtfully into the 9-by-12-foot pit that students had dug over the last four and a half months. “There are a lot of challenges with archaeology.” The dig is in a corner of Harvard Yard near Matthews Hall. It has been excavated by students enrolled...