Field Day 19

Here's a good example of a week in autumn in southern New York: on Friday it was in the low 70s, and I wore a T-shirt and shorts; today (Monday) it was in the low 40s, and my hands were so cold I had trouble tying knots and taking down notes on the site. Fortunately it's supposed to become warmer later in the week.

And some more good news: Feature 2 is officially CLOSED! That big stone pillar you see in the photo below is sitting on a pedestal of dirt. There is no foundation we can see below it, but the rocks to the left could be part of something. However, at this point in the season we have to have a strong sense of our priorities, so we won't be investigating that quite yet.


Instead, we decided to expand STP 3, the unit where we found the most eighteenth-century artifacts and the very compelling (possible) foundation wall. Our goal now is to see if the foundation wall continues. John P. (below) is taking the turf off of the expanded unit, which I have named Feature 4.


Though we haven't yet gone deep enough to tell whether the wall continues, we know that the artifacts continue, and continue in abundance. We've gotten some pottery, glass, mortar, brick, coal, some (probably modern) fabric, and a (definitely modern) bottle cap.


And also nails. This haul represents perhaps 1/8 of what came out of the unit today. You can also see some glass, pottery, and coal.


Meanwhile, John S. (who brought a great packet of photos of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church for us to consider) and Dick (and later Laurie and new excavator Edgar, not pictured) continued to excavate Feature 3, but only for a few more inches. With all the rocks in the unit, we couldn't dig down deeper without removing them - and we didn't want to remove them in case they were part of the foundation wall of St. Mark's Church (which seems likely). The best way to confirm whether the rocks are part of the foundation is to expand the unit in the direction that seems most promising, but since we have already begun this process with STP 3, we have to pace ourselves.

This is what Feature 3 looked like at the end of the level. JJ asked what the big rocks might be for if the rocks along the northern wall are the foundation. The truth is, I'm not sure. They could also be part of the foundation, or they could have fallen from higher up in the foundation wall into their current place. What seems certain is that the rocks along the northern wall (the upper wall in this image) are in their original location, as they are mortared in place.


Last (but not least) Bill and Claudia continued the excavation of Feature 1. On Saturday, we found almost no artifacts in Feature 1; today it was overflowing with artifacts, mainly from the northwest corner of the unit. It was there that Claudia found multiple pieces of what appears to be painted plaster. The paint is mainly pink with some black, red, and gray areas. If we are right in our identification of these artifacts and they are pieces of plaster, such as from the inside walls of the church, they could be extremely helpful in reconstructing the church's appearance.

The question, of course, is which church? While we currently believe that Feature 1 represents part of St. Mark's, the plaster comes from a much deeper level than most of the artifacts we have found in the unit. Therefore, they may be older, and possibly date to the time of St. George's. In such a small space, we could easily see artifacts from both churches, the time in between, and the time before in the same area.