While our students languished on the beach (or somewhere) during spring break, the intrepid Archaeological Society of Delaware team returned to the farm. We were delighted to be joined by Dan Griffith, former Director of the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs and Director of the Avery’s Rest Archaeology project for the ASD, the most extensive excavation of a 17th-century site in Delaware, in Sussex County near Rehoboth. We completed the 1.5’ diameter shovel test pits placed every 25’ on the flat upper terrace and down slope to the west and began slowly working our way from the east down the south slope toward the Appoquinimink. The soil deposits are deeper, and consist of eroded soils washed down the slope by water and wind.
After a week of break for all of us, we returned to the site in mid-April. By day’s end, we’d finally tested all of the 270+ metal detecting hits and mapped them and the 200 artifacts we’d found visible on the surface. About 80% of the metal finds are nails; those not too corroded to identify are of types made in the 1600 and 1700s. What building(s) are they from, you ask? We are asking ourselves the same question, with no answers to offer yet. We dug 8 more STPs, continuing to work our way west. They are yielding small artifacts, consistent in type: mostly brick, nails, stone shatter and waste from stone toolmaking, red earthenware kitchen ceramics, and tobacco pipe stems.