During their first week in the field, students John Campbell, Sara Owens and Christina Torres (behind Sara) investigate a square.
Belal Sayed digs while Seth Farber, Natasha Finnegan, Elizabeth Albershardt work at the screen.
Dispatch from Field School - 2008
Chief archaeologist Dr. Tim Riordan reports from Field School 2008 excavations underway in
Town Center. Visit the site Wednesday through Sunday, through August 2.
Two artifacts found during Week 2 created some excitement.
Week 1
The rhythm of summer at St. Mary’s, for over thirty years now, includes the scrape of shovels on dirt. Field school is back in session, this year at the Calvert House, and a new group of students is excited about other peoples’ trash. We began in the field on June 4th and worked through a blisteringly hot weekend.
The purpose of this summer’s excavations is to better understand the back yard of the Calvert House. This structure, built by Leonard Calvert in the first few years of the settlement, served as the first state house and the largest inn, or ordinary, in St. Mary’s. In 1645, the house served as the headquarters for a rebellion against Lord Baltimore and a fort, named “Mr. Pope’s Fort,” was built around it. When Governor Calvert retook the colony in 1646, he regained the house and filled in the fort ditch. Calvert died in the house in 1647.
As the center first of Governor Calvert’s plantation and later as an ordinary, the property underwent multiple changes in its use and organization. Excavation in the 1980s suggested a model of how the yard was used and the location of two outbuildings. We return to the site this summer to test that model and to further define the architecture and function of the outbuildings. In addition, we hope to excavate a portion of the ditch of Pope’s Fort to further understand its construction and use.
Students in the class are mostly from St. Mary’s College although we have three from other colleges in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Most of them are either anthropology or history majors. A typical day begins at 8:30 am when we take the black plastic off the units, get the equipment from the trailer and start excavating. This is a very rich site and almost from the first shovelful of dirt, the students were finding many artifacts. Within a day or two, they had found pieces of all the types of ceramics we lectured them about in the first week. These were found along with numerous pipestems (our most common artifact), small metal things and artifacts relating to the Native American occupation of the site.
An interesting finding of the first week is the effect that the Commission has had on the site over the years. Every unit we have excavated so far has evidence of gravel paths, walkways and driveways put in by the Museum before the Brome-Howard house was moved off the property. Fortunately, these were all put on the surface and did not impact the archaeology. But we still have to remove them and this takes time.
Before we can see features like fence lines, post holes or even the fort ditch, we have to excavate through the plow disturbed soils. These are both surprisingly deep and exceptionally rich in artifacts – it is slow going, particularly on really hot days. By next week, we should have finished several of the units and will be able to report on the kinds of features being found.
The pace of excavation has begun to pick up this week. In field school, where everyone is learning how to do things, progress can be quite slow. The first week in the field, when everything is new, can be quite daunting. As we moved into the second week, you could see students settling into the rhythm and flow of digging and recording. In the first week, we completely finished one unit while this week, we have finished four.
As we progress through the mists of the plow zone, the features we seek have begun to appear. We have found segments of three fence ditches, which show up dark brown against the orange of the subsoil. These represent palisado fences like those around the Van Sweringen site. A narrow trench is dug in the ground and split logs are set vertically in it to form the fence. Understanding the arrangement and dating of the backyard fences is an important part of our research design.
We have begun to excavate four units over Pope’s Fort ditch, the 1645 fort built by rebels against Lord Baltimore. When this 10 ft. by 10 ft. area is down to subsoil, there will be a long segment of the ditch to investigate. While we might not know exactly what we will find in it, we are confident that it holds many secrets.
The site continues to produce thousands of artifacts. Every unit yields many tobacco pipe fragments, both pipe stems and bowl. Analysis of these will aid in dating the trash middens around the house and showing how they changed through time. The quantity of ceramics is also amazing. In the first week of excavations, the students found just about every 17th-century pottery type that we lectured to them about in the lab. That does not happen very often.
It is a strange process to see students get used to finding artifacts. On the first day of excavation, everything is a cause for excitement including brick fragments and oyster shells. By the second day, those things have become background noise and only artifacts cause excitement. Tobacco pipe stems, one of the most common types of artifacts found, still thrill and ceramics are the cause of much discussion. After the first week, even those items have begun to pale and become commonplace. Now it takes an exceptional artifact, something that stands out from the crowd, to cause a buzz. So far we have found two of these.
The first such artifact is a small, rectangular frame buckle, possibly from a shoe. It has a copper or brass frame and an iron tongue. The frame has embossed decoration which appears to have been tinned or silver washed. It has not yet been cleaned so the decorative pattern is unknown. This artifact appeals to the eye and the mind because it is something to which everyone can relate. It is whole and complete, which makes it rare, and it is an easily recognizable “thing,” which makes us appreciate it more. An artifact like this reminds us that the “things” we excavate were once used by people not unlike ourselves. It connects us, in a tenuous way, with their experiences.
The other artifact that has gotten our interest is also an example of a human touched “thing” but it is more of a mystery. Out of a plow zone context, we recovered a ring with a glass insert. The exact composition of the ring is subject of debate and a determination of that fact will greatly influence the interpretation of artifact. If it is some alloy of copper, it might be 17th century. However, if it is some type of white metal, it may be 19th century.
Our first impression, in the field, was that it dated to the 17th century and that it was a reliquary ring, a ring holding a sacred object. Under the dark glass there is a gold foil visible and a woven pattern. Small, modern day reliquaries often have the sacred object resting on fabric and sealed between gold foil and glass. Whether the ring still holds a relic is uncertain but there is a small, triangular shaped, dark object under the glass.
If the metal turns out to be a type of white metal not invented until the 19th century, then this could be a piece of mourning jewelry. It might have contained a memento from a loved one, such as a lock of hair. Either way, it made an impression on all who saw it and is the perfect example of the humanly-touched “thing.”
Although Southern Maryland has been getting drenched with rain almost every night, it has not rained during a day when we were in the field. This does not mean that we have escaped unscathed however. All of the units are covered at night with a black plastic tarp to keep the water out and, with all the rain, the students are becoming experts at bailing. Every morning, after it rains, we spent at least a half hour removing the water by hand before we can begin excavation. On the plus side, the ground is very moist and easy to dig.
As expected at the Calvert House, there continue to be many and wonderful artifacts. We have found several small fragments of very elaborate table glass this week. Also, there was a piece of an unusual glass bead. Almost all of our beads are either robin’s egg blue or navy blue in color and they are round. The bead we found this week was a tubular, white bead with red and green stripes. In over 20 years of digging at St. Mary’s, I have only seen one other bead like this and it was found at the bottom of Pope’s Fort Ditch in 1987.
A very beautiful discovery was part of the medallion of a Rhenish blue and grey stoneware jug with an elaborate eagle on it. (Photo 1) These jugs come from Germany and were used for shipping wine all around the world. This piece has a distinctive octagonal border. Silas Hurry, our curator, found an illustration of a similar eagle with an octagonal border and a date of 1688. Ours is, unfortunately, missing the date but we may yet find the other piece. (Photo 2)
We continue to look for fences. (Photo 3) In the 17th century, palisade fences were made by digging a narrow trench, splitting logs and setting them upright in the trench. These appear in the excavations as darker lines in the orange subsoil. Geologists tell us that the subsoil was the bottom of the Potomac River some 200,000 years ago – we don’t really care, no one was here then. But, when you dig into that subsoil, you create a mixed soil and this is what we call a feature. In the next few weeks, as we begin to excavate some of the fence features, we will find the actual shape of the split logs and begin to know what the fences were like.
The uncovering of Pope’s Fort ditch continues. (Photo 4) Two of the four units on top of the ditch have now exposed the feature and by the end of the week, we will be able to see the entire width of the ditch. The surface of the ditch shows many oyster shell and quite a bit of bone. It suggests there is much to find here.
Archaeology is seldom as simple as we might wish it to be. As we uncovered the first part of the ditch, we found a fence line cutting right across it. (Photo 5) In the photo, the trowel is sitting on the ditch fill and the line scribed above it is the inner edge of the ditch. The fence line is visible as the darker area running from the top to the bottom. This means that before the ditch can be excavated, the fence line has to be excavated. While unexpected, the fence line will provide us with some useful information and illustrates an important archaeological point. We can say that the fence has to date later than the ditch. As the fence cuts into the fill of the ditch, the ditch had to be dug and filled in before the fence was dug. This is what archaeologists call relative dating and it is often vital in understanding how a site developed. The fence looks like it has cool stuff in it too, but that’s for later.
Photo 1- Lisa Ruiz of LaPlata with a sherd of Rhenish salt-glazed stoneware that she found. The medallion features the two-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs.
Photo 2 - Close up of the salt-glazed stoneware.
Photo 3 - Fence line feature is a darker brown.
Photo 4 - Lisa Ruiz, Natasha Finnegan and Sara Owens uncovering Pope's Fort ditch.
Photo 5 - Pope's Fort ditch.
Halfway through field school at the end of this week. It seems to be going by with blinding speed – except on afternoons when the temperature is in the mid to high 90s. We continue to find good things. This week there has been some 17th-century green table glass, a complete prehistoric clay pipe bowl and a couple of complete, or nearly complete white clay pipe bowls among all the other artifacts. Several of the pipe fragments have had maker’s marks which can be identified and dated in the lab. That will help the analysis greatly. One of the most interesting things we found this week was the neck and part of the shoulder of a case bottle – this was an early, square bottle. (Photo 1 and 2) They are quite fragile and we do not often find them in one piece. Along with the neck were a number of other pieces of the same bottle and it may be possible to reconstruct the shape and size of the bottle.
Thus far, we have opened and completed about 20 units, which is a little bit more than half of the excavations we planned. Pope’s Fort ditch has been relocated and we have discovered a number of fence line segments. The majority of our units have been excavated around the area where a post hole was discovered in the 1980s work. One of the goals of the summer was to find a pattern of post holes which would be associated with an outbuilding. It is looking less and less likely that will happen here.
In fact, the post hole is not as large as was thought in the earlier work. It is intruded by a fence line which ends in the hole and made it look bigger and more like a structural post hole. We are beginning to believe that it is a gate post, which is an important discovery in its own right.
Part of our work this summer is not only to map the fence lines but to excavate some of them for dating purposes. Happily, both of the fences being excavated have produced numerous artifacts and debris which will be useful in comparing them to other such features. A paling fence, like those we are excavating is a complex feature. The artifacts included in it tell us about the dating of the fence but the feature itself reveals how the fence was built and what happened to it. As we go down into the trench, we can often define molds of the logs which made up the fence. (Photo 3) The shape and size of these molds is suggestive of what purpose the fence had. In the photo, the molds are large and mostly rounded. This suggests that they did not split the logs but used whole logs. This was intended to be a stout fence, perhaps to keep pigs out of the gardens and orchard behind the house.
The profile of the feature, seen in the next photo, shows that the bottom of the log was rounded rather than pointed. (Photo 4) It was placed close to the exterior or outside part of the trench. The contrast between the dark fill of the paling mold and the mottled fill of the trench suggests that this fence stood long enough to rot in place. This is one of two parallel fences in the same place and it will be interesting to see which is earlier than the other.
Plans made before excavation are often not exactly what happens in the field. The plan was for us to uncover a section of Pope’s Fort ditch and excavate it. This will still happen but it will be delayed by the discovery of a mystery trench, which I mentioned last week, cutting directly across the ditch fill. The profile, shown in the next photo, reveals the origin of this trench. (Photo 5) At the top of the profile is a gravel layer which is one of the many gravel features laid on the site as part of the museum’s own use of the property. Below this is topsoil which has almost nothing in it. The top of the trench is just below the topsoil and it cuts through both a plow zone and a layer we term unplowed humus. The latter is part of the original surface when the colonists arrived.
While we can not specifically date the trench based on these relationships, they do, in relation to the history of the site, provide a relative date for the digging of the trench. After the Calvert House was gone, the site became farm land in the 18th century and was plowed. When Dr. Brome built his house here in the 1840s, the plowing would have stopped. The trench was dug before the topsoil was deposited but there is no way to know when that happened. It dates after 1840 but before the museum took over the site. Unless it makes a sharp turn, this trench can only be 35 feet long because it has not been seen in other excavated units.
Regardless of the origin of the trench or its purpose, it will have to be excavated before we can get to the ditch for Pope’s Fort. The rule in archaeology is - last in, first out – we always dig the youngest feature first to avoid contaminating the older one. While it was not part of our original plan, I do not think anyone will object as it seems to be filled with lots of things and large things. This week we will document and excavate the section of this trench that intrudes the ditch and I expect to find interesting artifacts in it.
Photo 1- Natasha Finnegan holding case bottle neck
Photo 2 - Detail of case bottle neck
Photo 3 - Patirck Schwarz pointing to paling molds
Photo 4 -Profile of paling ditch showing mold in trench
Photo 5 - Profile of trench cutting through other layers
This week begins the best part of field school. In the first few weeks, students needed to be taught all the little things – setting up the transit, filling out records, making drawings, as well as learning the jargon involved. At times, both I and my field assistant, Patrick McKitrick, felt overwhelmed by the needs of so many at once. Now most of the teaching is done. For the most part, students have the skill set necessary to work on their own. There will be fine tuning right to the last day of the class, but things are much easier these days. From the archaeologist’s standpoint, this is a better time because the work becomes more interesting. Instead of scattering units over the area, we begin to concentrate on areas likely to help finish our goals. Instead of spending most of our time excavating disturbed soils, we begin to concentrate more on features, the undisturbed evidence of the 17th century. We spent the first four weeks assembling the pieces to the puzzle and in the last five weeks, we get to put the puzzle together.
One of those puzzle pieces is the landscape of the Calvert House backyard. We continue to uncover and excavate fence line trenches. In previous weeks, we have completed two trench segments, both of which had lots of debris in them, including oyster shell, brick, a selection of tobacco pipe fragments and some ceramics. Two students worked on another ditch segment this week and were disappointed to find that there was very little in it. (Photo 1) Aside from some prehistoric flakes, there were two pieces of colonial window glass and an early, blue and white striped bead. The number of artifacts may have been disappointing but that evidence is very important. On a heavily occupied site, like the Calvert House was in the 17th century, any feature with few artifacts in it, had to be created early in the site’s history. Later, after people had lived here for awhile, their trash was scattered across the yard and got included in any hole they dug.
In addition to the lack of artifacts, there are some other indications of the date of this fence. It appears to begin at the northeast corner of the house and to be oriented at the same angle as the house itself. The earliest fences were angled at a 45 degree angle to the building, so this one is somewhat later. Earlier work showed that this fence crosses the filled in ditch of Pope’s Fort, dating it after c. 1646. Our best guess on the date of the fence would be c. 1646-1660. The end date being around the time that heavier occupation began on the site.
Excavating the feature revealed how the fence was created. The molds were dark and obvious, suggesting that the fence stood long enough to rot rather than having the pales pulled out. (Photo 2) A number of the pales look square or rectangular, suggesting that they were quartering logs rather than simply splitting them. Perhaps this shows the need for a stronger fence. At least on of the molds was half moon shaped, as if it were the outside part of the log.
We gathered quite a bit of landscape information this week but it was from the wrong century. The large area we were opening to investigate Pope’s Fort was finally completed. In it was the “mystery trench” that I talked about last week. Having finally gotten the whole area down to the level of the trench, we found that there were a large number of features present. (Photo 3) Besides the trench we already knew about, there were two others present and a number of smaller features. Two of the smaller features were post holes, three feet apart and oriented with the Brome House which sat on the site until 1994. These are probably gate posts for a walkway leading to the Brome kitchen. All of these features date to the 19th or 20th century as they intrude on plow zone. Even is they are not what we are looking for, they have to be treated as archaeological features and be recorded and excavated. (Photo 4)
Finding all of these modern features has slowed down our investigation of the fort. We began excavating them and will continue to do so for most of the coming week. However, late on Sunday, we were able to clear the plow zone in one quadrant of the area and revealed the edge of the fort ditch. By the end of this coming week, I expect to have begun excavating the fort ditch and we look forward to the secrets it will reveal.
Photo 1- Amy Publicover and Christina Torres excavating early fence line
Photo 2 - Molds in the fence line
Photo 3 - Sarah Owens and Natasha Finnegan cleaning features in the fort area
Photo 4 -Crew mapping modern features prior to excavation
A unique aspect of the field school at Historic St. Mary’s City is that the students have a chance to help sail the Maryland Dove, our square rigged trading vessel. We have some dedicated sailors and they have been talking about this excursion since almost the first day. It is an exciting end to a week where we made major progress in achieving the Summer’s research goals.
Currently we are excavating our fourth and fifth fence trenches. Last week I mentioned a fence that was dated after c. 1646 because it cut through the filled-in ditch of Pope’s Fort. One of the fences we are excavating this week is parallel to that fence and only two feet further east. (Photo 1) Both fences seem to be heading for the northeast corner of the Calvert House and are oriented with that structure. The difference between the fences is that the one we are excavating now was not seen to cross the fort ditch and may have been cut through by it. This would mean that the fence was in place by 1645 and was torn down when they created the fort. This kind of dating of landscape features is vital to understanding how the backyard was used and how it changed over time.
On the east side of the site, just off the northeast corner of the house, we opened a number of units this week in hopes of defining an outbuilding. In the previous work, done in the 1980s, a large, rectangular post hole was found in this area, suggesting the presence of a structure here. The students will agree that excavation in this area is very difficult. Part of the area was a hard-packed, gravel driveway associated with the 19th-century house. There are also several trees crowded in here which leads to units with many, many roots crossing them. Despite these problems, a couple of exciting discoveries were made. In one unit, we found a large rectangular post hole, very similar to the one found in the 1980s. (Photo 2) This post is about 10 to 11 feet from the previous one and seems to be oriented in the same direction. If there is an outbuilding in this area, it will be defined by a pattern of post holes. Finding this post hole is the first step in that direction. As a bonus in this square, there was another fence line but one oriented at a 45 degree angle to the Calvert House. Previous research suggests that this is the earliest orientation of fences on the site and we plan on excavating this trench to add to our sample.
One of our units is located less than 10 feet from the corner of the building and the quantity of 17th-century artifacts in the plow zone is amazing. (Photo 3) There are numerous pipe stems, ceramics and bone being found here. One of the main entrances to the Calvert House was about 15 feet away, on the east wall of the building, and much of this midden was probably thrown away by patrons leaving the building or servants cleaning up after them. Two items of beauty were found here as well. (Photo 4) On the left is a molded Dutch pipe stem with a fleur-de-lis decoration while on the right are several large pieces of 17th-century table glass. Elaborate table glass is a common find at the Calvert House and demonstrates that even in the earliest occupation, there was a striving for elegance among the colony’s elite.
It took all week and some dedicated excavation but all of the 19th and 20th century features over the ditch of Pope’s Fort were completed. While there was not much found, the record keeping took a long time. Modern features, also part of the story of the site, need to be recorded in as much detail as the 17th-century features. Finally, late on Sunday afternoon, the last of the plow zone was removed and the edge of the fort ditch was exposed. (Photo 5) The trench, as exposed in this area, is about five and a half feet wide. The exact width of the ditch could not be determined because the northern edge was intruded by the septic trench line and destroyed.
Next week the fort ditch will be mapped and fully recorded. Then we begin the exciting task of excavating a portion of the ditch. Everyone is very excited about this and the possibilities it might hold. We will make this a group effort and everyone will get a chance to dig in the ditch. It is my hope to concentrate on this and complete it before our major public program of the year, Tidewater Archaeology Weekend on July 26 and 27, so that it can be interpreted to our visitors.
Photo 1- 1 Side by side fences, the left trench dated after 1646 and the right one dates before 1645
Photo 2 - Crystal Collins points to a post hole possibly associated with an outbuilding
Photo 3 - Amy Publicover and John Campbell screen dirt from the unit by the door
Photo 4 -Molded Dutch pipe stem and elegant table glass fragments
Photo 5 - Sarah Owens, Seth Farber and Crystal Collins complete cleaning the fort ditch
Short entry for a short week. On Wednesday and Thursday, the field school took a road trip to
Back to work on Friday, perhaps a little tired and bleary eyed. This was “fort week” where we began excavating the ditch of Pope’s Fort. We expected the fort ditch to be relatively deep, perhaps 4 to 5 feet, and to have lots of material in it. Certainly that was characteristic of previously excavated parts of the fort ditch. So that everyone could participate in this part of the project, we put four people to digging and everyone else was screening. (Photo 1) Much to our surprise, the ditch turned out to be neither of the things we were expecting. At most, it appears to be 2.5 feet deep. While it does have a lot of bone and oyster shell in it, there is not much in the way of ceramics, pipes or other artifacts. While this was disappointing, the evidence will help to understand the overall use and abandonment of the fort.
As it became clear that the ditch was not going to produce major finds, we treated it like any other feature and returned to the more mundane work of tracing out fences and looking for an outbuilding. Added to this was the task of getting ready for Tidewater Archaeology Weekend. Because we invite the public to come in and help screen, we wanted a number of squares down to the plow zone and ready to be excavated on the weekend. For the students, unfortunately, this meant spending most of last week and a portion of this week excavating topsoil and gravel layers from the 20th century. They did this without complaining and understood that it was necessary for the event.
Because of the disruptions of the trip and other things, we did not get much done on the project goals this week. We did finish one fence line segment and it was quite unusual (Photo 2) The fence is parallel to the Calvert House and seems to divide the near backyard from the further backyard. The dating of the fence is still uncertain but it appears to date to c. 1660. But it was neither the dating nor the location that made the fence unusual. As we got into the feature, it became apparent that tree roots had found the soft soil of the trench and grown massively along its length. (Photo 3) I have never seen this happen before and it made for some difficult excavation. The trees on this site provide great shade for most of the day but the roots are the price we pay for that benefit.
Photo 1- 1 Caitlin Plitt, Natasha Finnegan, Seth Farber and Elizabeth Albershardt excavate the ditch
Photo 2 - Elizabeth Albershardt excavating a fence line
Photo 3 - Tree roots running in the fence line
There was a big sigh of relief when Saturday rolled around. The students had spent part of last week and the beginning of this week getting ready for our big public event, Tidewater Archaeology Weekend. This year, “getting ready” meant excavating the modern layers from a number of units so that the public would be able to sift the plow zone soil. Unfortunately, most of the modern layers were composed of gravel, which does not go easily through the screen and has to be picked over carefully. (Photo 1) We removed about 100 cubic feet of gravel in order to have good soil for the public event.
The weekend was a big success. The number of visitors was up from last year, the weather was magnificent (for the most part) and the number and quantity of “things” did not disappoint. The students did a great job interacting with the public. They did the museum and themselves proud. (Photo 2)
As expected, the plow zone on this site is very rich and yielded many ceramics, pipes, metal objects relating to the use of the Calvert House through time. One of the advantages of this site is the lack of deep and consistent plowing. When Dr. Brome built his house on the property c. 1840, the plowing ceased and most of the area became lawn. Many items, which under other circumstances would be broken up by mechanical plowing, were preserved in bigger pieces.
A number of tobacco pipe bowls were recovered intact this weekend. (Photo3) Tobacco pipe fragments are one of the most common artifacts found on Colonial sites and are very useful for dating. The shape of the bowl and the size of the bore hole in the stem changed through time in response to the price of tobacco. Early pipes have small bowl and large holes. As tobacco became more affordable, the bowls got bigger. To accommodate a longer stem, the bore hole became smaller. Archaeologists are inclined to like tobacco pipes for this reason.
Many pipes are marked by their makers, providing another means of dating and some have particular designs that stand out. We found one of the latter over the weekend. (Photo 4) It is referred to as a “crusader and huntress” pipe because there are pictures molded on the sides of the bowl. The large piece on the left in the photo shows the bottom of the crusader and his dog. You can see the dog’s legs on the left, as he stands vertical and the burly legs of the crusader on the right. One foot and the flowing gown of the huntress is shown on the fragment to the right. These pipes appear to be Dutch in origin and date to the late 17th century.
Another object found this weekend is not so useful for dating but touches the human side of all of us. (Photo 5) It is a fireplace tile, also of Dutch manufacture, which features a painted image of an animal, perhaps a dog. The fireplaces in Governor Calvert’s house were decorated with tiles like these. They were not strictly functional objects; the fireplace would work just as well without them. Instead, they reflect the owner’s need to go beyond the rough frontier existence and bring a civilized feeling to the house. Even today, the fragment of tile, broken and chipped as it was found, is a pleasing work of art and added to the excitement of the weekend.
Photo 1- Christina Torres, Natasha Finnegan and Seth Faber sifting gravel
Photo 2 - Caitlin Plitt assists visitors during Tidewater Weekend
Photo 3 - One of several complete pipe bowls recovered this weekend
Photo 4 - Fragments of a molded Dutch pipe
Photo 5 - Fireplace tile fragment with a painted animal
The last week of field school is always quite hectic. Coming just after Tidewater Archaeology Weekend, there are a number of squares to finish and record. There is a real urgency to get things done so that the field archaeologist (that is – me) does not have an overwhelming amount to do after all the free labor leaves. For some, it is a time of joy that they do not have to do this any more while others feel sad that it is over. By the end of ten weeks of working towards a common goal, the excavation team feels a kinship with each other much like a sports team at the end of season.
The site continued to produce a large number of interesting artifacts, even in this last week of limited excavation. One of the most interesting was a fragmented but complete, terra cotta pipe with an incised design. (Photo 1) Archaeologists have nicknamed this the “running deer” pattern and it is very common in the fill of Pope’s Fort Ditch. Of course this one was not found there but in the plow zone by the corner of the house.
The field school worked very hard this week to complete the section of Pope’s Fort Ditch which we began. (Photo 2) This section of the ditch is very different than others we have excavated. Most of the others seem to have been dug and then almost immediately had subsoil slump back into the bottom. The section we excavated this summer has a layer of black silt loam at the bottom which indicates that it stood open for a longer period. Another odd thing about this section of the ditch is an erosional gully that was developing in the bottom of the ditch while it was open. For this to happen, the ditch must be sloping deeper to the east. It is possible that this is an indication of a gate of some kind to the west, close to the corner bastion.
After spending much of the season looking for outbuildings, we may have found one at the last moment. (Photo 3) Just to the northeast of the Calvert House, we found a second post hole associated with a small, rectangular pit filled with a dark silt and lots of oyster shell. This looks very much like a storage pit below the floor of a building. Only future excavation will be able to determine if this is part of an outbuilding but the evidence is interesting.
So the final excavation day comes. (Photo 4) My thanks to all the students and volunteers who made this summer both interesting and fun. May your future excavations be full of artifacts and your post holes align as they should.
