Field Day 12

Today was pretty exciting. We found a very interesting artifact and received a visit from the police. Apparently someone called to report that people were metal detecting and digging in the graveyard. Just to make things clear, we are working with the town's full knowledge and approval (we also have a sign at the front of the cemetery to let people know what's going on), but apparently the police were not informed of what we were doing. It was just as well, though, because the police got to have their own tour of the site.

I love this archaeology-family portrait. They are digging STP 3C, the last of the STP 3s to be uncovered. Carol suggested that we "tear it out." Of course, by "tear it out" she means "excavate slowly and meticulously layer by layer, recording all artifacts and soil changes and stopping to measure every level."


Here's where we were at the end of the morning. STP 3B and STP 3 are the deepest (about 20 inches below datum), STP 3C is the shallowest (about 9 inches below datum). The artifacts we found in STP 3 match those of the other STP 3s: nails, glass, coal, and slate. The soil is also similar. As we expected, STP 3C is more like STP 3B than 3A or 3. This fits our theory that the wall ran north to south.

Meanwhile, work continued on Feature 1, the dry well. Whether or not it was a dry well, it's clear that Feature 1 was a dump of some kind - the sheer number and concentration of artifacts suggest that they were deposited intentionally. Today we opened up the second half of the feature, revealing (what else?) glass and NAILS. Here's Linda going over the unit with her metal detector.

Quite a few people dug Feature 1 today. It's a big unit, but not always easy to dig. There are tons of rocks, creating lots of nooks and crannies that have to be swept out. And it's hard to dig the middle of the unit without sitting, well, in the unit. Sue found a nice built-in chair to work from.

Now here is the great find of the day. It may not look like much in the photograph, and in fact I'm not sure I would have recognized it if I saw it, but Sue thought it fit so naturally in her hand that she had to show it to Carol, who identified it as a hand pestle. It would have been held exactly as Carol is holding it in the photo, and used to mash grain or corn. There are soft indents on either side where someone's fingers gripped it over and over again, and the tip is pocked, as it would have to be to keep it effective.

We can't tell who used the hand pestle. The technology is American Indian, but it could have easily been adapted by a European. We also don't know how it ended up in Feature 1, although the nature of the other artifacts suggests that it was just tossed in after it was no longer useful.

Here's a great picture showing multiple members of the team at work - Gretchen recording as Sally excavates, Linda going over the open area with her metal detector, Scott and I digging STP 3C, and a person on the sidewalk calling the police on us.

John, the historian of a nearby town, came by to see what we've been up to. When we told him about our search for St. George's, he took a look around the graveyard and at the eighteenth-century map and added some insight of his own. He said that eighteenth-century cemeteries in this area were generally located in back of or to the side of the church. This could place St. George's closer to the road (where we originally were looking) or over to the side of the eighteenth-century sandstones.

Even though we didn't find anything in STP 4, the unit we placed where we first thought the church would be, it's possible that the church was there and that the deposits associated with it were displaced by later disturbance (such as the creation of the walkway or the stone wall). In that case we might try placing another unit there, away from the walkway.

For now, though, we've decided to pursue what we have found in the empty area between the sandstones. We laid out STP 5 (above) over one of the areas identified by Angelika (and corroborated by Linda today) with her metal detector. Even if this isn't the church, it is possible that it's the similarly sized, unidentified building located next to it on our 1781 map, or some other structure. In any case, STP 5 is far enough away from any graves to make it safe for us to take a look.

Somehow, in laying out STP 5, I managed to do this to the tape measure.

Below is Feature 1 at the end of the day. The dotted line shows the divide between the two halves of the feature. As you can see, the rocks continue in the eastern half.



The artifacts continue too. Here's more of that painted fancy glass:

And here's Gretchen with a thick piece of glass with bubbles in it.

Lastly here's Gretchen and I filling out forms at the end of the day.