On May 11th, students and ASD members met on-site, and continued to carefully excavate test units. The weather, for once, was not too windy, too cold, or too bug-friendly; leading to happy archaeologists who could get right to work! Lots of dirt was moved during the morning hours before lunch. After lunch, however, was when students and ASD members had the opportunity to walk around the site and “take tours” of the other units being excavated that they were not assigned to work on.
These tours were exciting! Up on the higher ground, there are several plow scars, emphasizing how much this landscape has been cultivated and worked over time. Additionally, there are some interesting stone formations popping up in the same test unit. Is it a foundation? a very small portion of a stone fence or wall? a place-marker? or just stones tossed around from the plow we know was being used right next to these stones, missing it by inches? Is it simply too soon to know? Right now your guess are as good as ours! Hopefully more excavation on the high land will lead to a better understanding of these stones.
While there were interesting plow scars and stone formations found in one test unit on the high land, one test unit at the bottom of the slope closer to the water was also finding stone features. In the wall of one test unit at the bottom of the slope was a large water-rounded cobble. A slightly rougher-looking stone can be seen peaking out from the next layer to the excavated in this same unit. Is this evidence of rocks washed down the slope with erosion? or is is possible evidence of some sort of old path or drain? or is it, once again, simply too soon to know? Although hypothesizing is part of the fun, in order to know for sure, and to better understand the significance of these stones, more digging must be done.
Overall, the artifacts being discovered on this site, both on the high land and down the slope, appear to be similar in type – there are a lot of small brick fragments, wrought nails, flakes and other lithic affiliated with Native American tool-making processes, red lead-glazed earthenwares, delftware or tin-glazed earthenware, and tobacco pipe stems.