At the close of our second week, we have excavated almost 500 cubic feet of dirt -- about six small truck loads. Compared to what you can do with a backhoe, it doesn't sound like much. But when you consider that every bucket was carefully hand excavated and all of the dirt processed through screens to recover artifacts -- it is an amazing amount of work in only nine short days.
A large part of our efforts today focused on cleaning up the units in and around Structure 1 -- including the large feature believed to be a chimney base, cellar, or both. We managed to fully expose this feature today -- now affectionately known in archaeological jargon as "Feature 14." A large part of archaeological research is about patience. We exposed the first small part of Feature 14 over a week ago in one of our excavation units. Once we identified it as something "probably significant," we stopped digging deeper in that area. We stopped because we needed to see the full outline of it before we begin to dig deeper into it. Why? Looking at the "whole thing" tells us how to treat the feature in our future excavations -- how big is it? What is it likely to be (given our knowledge of similar features from other sites)? Unless we can see "the whole thing," we don't know how to plan our investigations of it.
The photo below shows the first section of this feature, as photographed on June 10. Keep in mind the large limestone block circled in yellow...
As we worked throughout the day today, we carefully cleaned and examined all of the excavation units to define the outlines of the whole feature... We look for subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences in soil color and texture to define the outlines of "things from the past." The photo below shows the edge of Feature 14 in "closeup." Note the clear and distinct break between the orange-brown clay below the "yellow arrow" and the dense cluster of limestone mixed with mortar, plaster, and other items above the arrow.
The photograph below shows more of the same -- only this time a "squared corner" of Feature 14. The "yellow arrows" point to the edges of the feature -- the blue arrow points to the sharp corner.
The photo below (taken from about 14 feet above the ground on a very sturdy ladder!), shows the whole feature as exposed and mapped at the end of work today. The yellow circle is the same limestone block shown in the photo above from June 10 -- a big change in how we look at this feature from "way back then!"
Our investigations have revealed nearly 20 "features" in this single excavation area -- they are highlighted below. Feature 14 is outlined in blue. This square or rectangular feature is our chimney base or cellar fully exposed. The yellow circles are postholes that range in age from probably about 1850 up through the 1980s. The black ovals/circles show possible shallow pits or other features that remain to be better defined. Now that we have identified, defined, mapped and photographed all of these potentially significant features -- we will begin to delve deeper into them next week.
We now have only three weeks left in our five week project. For the project, we have already in two brief weeks moved from "let's try to find the slave cabins" to "we're pretty sure we've found some of them." For the students, they have moved from "I have no clue what I'm doing" to "I'm starting to understand how to do this."
More news to come next week...