Much of our work today revolved around completing the tedious tasks of paperwork -- making sure that we have recorded everything properly and thoroughly before we backfill the excavations. Archaeology is a "destructive science" -- unless we carefully record everything as we excavate, that information will be lost forever. So, while tedious, our "paperwork" is one of the most critical parts of our work. Below, most of the students are involved in recording the "profiles" of our excavation units -- the different "layers" or strata of soil and sediment uncovered during our excavations. This information will be critical in interpretations of our excavations -- and for future research.
The end product is a detailed record of the "sides" of each excavation unit -- like the profile drawing shown below.
Despite all of the disturbance from 20th century fencelines, planting holes, waterlines, trees -- and a host of local rodent residents past and present -- we have accumulated sufficient evidence from our investigations to feel certain we have found one of the main areas where slaves lived during the mid-1800s and where tenants continued to live throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.
While we will wait until our laboratory analysis is finished to offer a firm "final hypothesis" from our summer 2004 field project -- the image below shows our tentative (and as yet somewhat speculative) conclusions... Outlined in blue is what we think was the remnants of a base for a large central chimney... Outlined in yellow is what we are fairly confident was a shallow subfloor storage cellar (located in front of the hearth)... And the white lines show where the cabin walls would have stood in relation to these features. As we analyze the artifacts, we anticipate that their distribution may tell us something about the location of doors and windows and other features...
On Thursday, we'll be closing out our notes and records -- and starting to put the dirt back in the holes.