Results from July 6, 2004

Once again, we missed the rain today -- by only a few minutes. The storms arrived about 10 or fifteen minutes after we closed up work today...

Most of the students were engaged in expanding our systematic metal detector survey today...


The results as of today are shown below -- existing buildings are outlined in black, the cabin we have been investigating is outlined in yellow, and the fenceline we think associated with it in yellow also. The white line is the old yard fenceline that we have confirmed. The blue rectangle is a possible guess based largely on the artifact distribution about where a second slave cabin might once have stood...


The "3-D" representation below shows the same information in a different format -- again, the yellow oval outlines the incredibly high peak of metal artifacts surrounding the area we're working in. Not an unexpected "high" for an area that may have housed as many as 30 of the 50 slaves.


"Cleanup" work also continued on many of our posts and other features... The photo below shows a cedar post in the fenceline we think extended from the slave cabins to the old yard fence. Excavating posts like these is not exciting work -- no artifacts and few rewards. But, recording the size of the posts, their depth, and other information allows us to sort out the multiple fencelines and their posts.


Similar work continued on about half a dozen postholes in and around our cabin... The two shown below were excavated today...


Weather and our work permitting, we'll hopefully have some new "aerial shots" of Cabin 1 for you to look at on Wednesday evening. Work continues in this area daily... The photo below shows a new fragment of a plate with a backmark. What is left is from "Charles Meakin" -- a potter who worked at two potteries in England during the late 1800s. This particular mark dates between 1870 and 1882, when he worked in Burslem. This -- along with other artifacts -- supports our belief that this cabin was occupied between 1850 and 1925. It was probably the "double cabin" occupied by "Uncle Charlie" from about 1900-1925.


And, as we continue to excavate beneath Cabin 1 -- we also continue to find "treasures" like the marble shown below.


With only three days left... we are hard-pressed for time to finish our work. But, with the dedication of our student crew, we shall persevere! Weather permitting, we'll have some aerial shots showing our recent work by tomorrow evening.