Back to Jamestown, Back to the Road . . .

For the last two weeks I have had a lab day Monday and Smith's Fort on Tuesday, so by the time I return to the field at Jamestown, I've been away for 4 days. It always feels like a long time, and it seems like so much work has happened in the units while I was gone. In fact, at one point today Danny was talking to a visitor and said "Do you see that large soil stain about 20 or 30 feet away?" I looked and was amazed. The soil stain he was talking about was a burial shaft in a unit we opened up in our first week - and it seemed so far away now!

We started this morning by taking a look at the uber-map of the site before opening a new unit. The reason we were opening one more unit, Danny explained, was because they had removed a concrete curb through that area a few years ago and thought there might be a large feature underneath.


Here is Danny showing us the location of the new unit on the uber-map. Yesterday Dave and I (well, mostly Dave) mapped the Smith's Fort units in 3-D. Today we looked at a 2-D representation of the features in our excavation area at Jamestown. Sorry the close-up is not very good, but you get the idea. I am not sure how often they dig features at Jamestown, but with a map like this they can immediately pinpoint features that were discovered and marked but left unexcavated. Then, in the future when there is all sorts of time and money for a full-fledged excavation, then can come right back and know just where to open their unit.

I am not sure if I mentioned it before, but the units are not placed arbitrarily. When Dr. Kelso first began the excavation in 1994, he chose a point as a reference against which all other points could be surveyed and plotted out. In surveying this point is called a datum, and it is often something that is not only stationary but that is also pretty likely to last a long time (like the corner of a building or - in the JR group's case - a monument.) Choosing a manmade structure is a great improvement over the way they used to do it in the 17th and 18th centuries, where property lines often included "such and such maple tree", making it difficult for researchers to know exactly where properties began and ended! Anyway, using the datum the JR group then plot where each 10' by 10' unit should go.

And so we used string to mark out our unit and were ready to open it. Unfortunately, a large portion of our unit lay underneath the old roadbed that used to lead to the ferry, and everything above the roadbed was fill that the JR group placed there a few years ago in an effort to level out the site and prevent erosion. Because we knew it was modern fill and unlikely to contain significant artifacts, Danny felt safe removing the majority of the overburden with Jamestown's very own backhoe.

The backhoe saved us a ton of backbreaking labor and a ton of time as well. However, it was still a tough morning because we all took shifts parking our wheelbarrow near the backhoe, getting a few shovelfuls of dirt, and trucking it over to the dump pile. It was really hard work - more than in some of the other units because the roadbed was very gravelly and compacted. It made for dense, heavy wheelbarrows full of dirt. Thank goodness it was not 105 degrees like it has been sometimes - it was a cool 86 degrees as it's hottest today.

A couple of artifacts did come out of the overburden as we got close to the "B" layer. The most interesting was the blue and white piece of Delft in the picture.

Teal, working a couple units over, found this really amazing fragment of pipe bowl and stem. It includes the heel of the pipe (which would be sort of below the bowl) - can you see the maker's mark? It is very difficult in this small picture, but there is a definite "R" and another letter (maybe a "c" or a "G"?)

As Dan shoveled in our unit, he found this awesome worked point. It seemed pretty huge, and we wondered if maybe the Virginia Indians had started to work the point but abadoned it soon after (perhaps because it broke down the middle as it looks today?) We had to clean up just after this was discovered, but now I'm hoping that we find the back half of this point in our unit tomorrow, and that they mend together cleanly!! :D

More digging will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon, because tomorrow morning we have a field trip to Colonial Williamsburg to take a look at some of the archaeology going on here. Should be fun to see how this site compares to J-town!

Guess What We Found?!?!?!

Tuesday was our day at Smith's Fort, on the south side of the James River. As everyone got to work, Dave asked me to help map the units as they looked at that point. Monday's group had dug a few features (meaning they excavated a few postholes), and we needed to make an accurate record of what the units looked like at this stage, before proceeding further. As I think I've mentioned before, doing archaeology is in essence destroying the evidence that you wish to analyze. (It's not like you can go back and rebuilt strata after the fact.) It's very important to keep very detailed records, in part so that as the field progresses and new methodology is developed, excavations can be re-analyzed in an effort to draw new conclusions from existing information.

To this end, we took a 3-D "picture" of what the units looked like at the start of the day. We used a pretty spacey-looking transit on loan to Jamestown Rediscovery from the University of Tennessee. Here is Dave holding the funky-looking 'staff of Ra' (i.e. stadia rod).

After telling me just how much more expensive than the normal transit this equiptment was, he then let me hold the staff for about a minute and a half. You can sort of see an antenna by Dave's waist - this is part of a remote control for the actual transit. It's pretty awesome to watch - once the information is plugged in, the transit reads the stadia rod and then follows it as you move from spot to spot. I'm actually not sure what my role was supposed to be in "helping" Dave. I held some stuff as he attached batteries and set up the transit, but after that I mostly watched. As he dragged the point of the stadia rod back and forth and up and down in the various features, the transit followed the movements and took a reading every couple seconds.

It was pretty cool to watch, but it seemed like a one-man operation. Dave then took the readings and exported them into a program that mapped them in 3-D. Even if I didn't really help at all, I was happy to watch and learn a little more about the high-tech way to map features.

While all the mapping was happening, M.A. and Teal started digging a smallish feature that looked a little bit like it might possibly be a grave. By the time I took this picture, they were already a good 18" or so down, which is why you see M.A. laying down. That is pretty much the only time you will see an archaeologist not squatting or kneeling to excavate. As Dave said yesterday, people tend to think of archaeology as "playing in the dirt" so it is important to maintain a professional demeanor on site. Sitting down immediately detracts from your professionality. Unfortunately, they did not find anything in this feature that would have indicated what it was or why it was there. It might still be a grave - as we learned from Dr. Owsely last week, human remains do not last well in the acidic and poorly-drained Virginia clay. We just can not say definitively what this feature might have been.

We also opened up a half-unit to completely excavate the area that needs to be prepared for planting. After mapping, I went over to shovel and screen with the rest of the group. We had some interesting artifact finds - including the yellowish-brown piece of ceramic below. I wondered if it might be sgraffito (which is a type of Italian pottery decorated by incising designs on the outside). When I asked Dave, he said it might have been part of a posset pot - WOOHOO! (You might remember this site from my post about syllabub - you can read more about posset and see some posset pots here: http://www.historicfood.com/Posset%20Recipes.htm)

I'm not sure what the bluish item at the bottom of the photo is. We guessed calcined (burnt) flint, but by the time we found it Dave was talking to a group from APVA who had come to find out how the excavation was going, and I never did get a chance to ask him. (And, of course, that's a fragment of pipestem at the top.)

In addition to mapping the features on graphs and with the transit, archaeologists also take a ton of pictures to record the way the features look - their edges, the color of the soil and any changes, etc. In this photo, you can clearly see the orange stain with a darker shadow on one edge running from left to right (it gets a little sketchier towards the right edge of the photo because there were a couple of postholes there that broke the line of the trench.)

We were especially excited about this feature, because we suspected it was old. The postholes (we guessed) were associated with the scaffolding used to build the present house in the 18th century, and because they cut through the trench, they must postdate it.

Dave tried hard to get a shot from directly above each feature, to get the clearest and best possible photo.

He even enlisted Alex's help at one point so that he could lean really far out over one feature. The lengths archaeologists will go to to get a good shot of a good feature!

It is hard to see, but in this next photo Dave is using his trowel to score the outlines of the features. (Check the video below to watch him score postmolds from the feature.) Then we took more photos! It is so important to appropriately record the data at every step in the excavation, and I'm sure it's always best to have too many photos as opposed to too few.

And here I am in a photo - with my first feature ever! Archaeologists will often have one or two people pose in the photo near the features, to give the viewer a sense of scale. Otherwise it might be difficult to tell whether a postmold was two inches in diameter or two feet! So here I am, posing with my trowel and my first-ever feature. :D

And what a feature it was! As we troweled off the top layers, beautifully clean-edged postmolds started to show up - clear as day! (A review - postmolds are the darker-stained soil left when the wood has rotted away.) It was easy to see the irregularity in the sizes of the split trees (pales) that were used, and how they had lined them up to fit closely together. With such a small area excavated, it was hard to tell whether it was a garden fence or a proper defensive palisade - but I think I'll choose to believe it was really a palisade!

And then we took more pictures. :D

And I had thought the coolest thing in my journal entry today would be the spacey transit - but no! We found a palisade! And we added some information to the history of the property, even if we didn't fully answer the question of what our palisade's purpose was.

Isn't archaeology awesome???

I'm NOT Sick!! :D

First of all, reports of my illness have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, I talked to Jamie the other day and yes, I was a little queasy this morning, but I ate (sparingly) at lunch and felt much better, especially after a cup of chicken noodle soup from the Dale House! I think perhaps my body is just tired of "Bowl o' Pasta"s and microwave dinners and decided to rebel a little. I went out and bought lots of nice healthy fruits and veg tonight, and I'm sure I'll be right as rain tomorrow! I wouldn't miss digging the Smith's Fort features for anything!

Anyway - drama aside, today was a lab day for my group. We started the day with a very interesting lecture from Merry Outlaw, the senior lab assistant/guru. She talked to us about specific kinds of ceramics, showing examples of each type and discussing the glaze and the fabric (the clay interior) of each. It was very interesting - especially when she started pulling out some later pieces (18th and 19th century) from her own collection.

Afterwards, we went back to work. It was again nice to be inside when the temperature outside was around 105 degrees. At the same time, lab work is just not so much my thing (sorry, Merry!) I love the company and the conversation, but sorting, labeling, and washing is just not my favorite thing. Mending started out fun this morning, but thanks to my dodgy tummy I did not handle the nail polish, cement and acetone smells very well. Instead, Merry sent me off to presort and label all the trays of artifacts that had been washed and were now dry.

Tools of the trade - especially the sharpie!!

I spent the remainder of the day grouping washed and dried artifacts into catagories (i.e. copper scraps, lithics, Delft, redware, stoneware, UFOs - unidentified ferrous objects), then labeling little ziplock baggies of every size imaginable with the unit number, category and number of artifacts. These then all go into a "mother bag" (a gigunda ziplock) labeled with the unit number for provenience* and "PRESORT". I would assume (although I didn't think to ask) that they go on to be assigned individual artifact numbers and be catalogued.

I was pleased to have finished 2 or 3 trays of artifacts by the time we cleaned up, and I certainly understand the importance of the work we were doing. By taking care to appropriately conserve and catalogue the artifacts we are finding now, we are preserving them for future researchers (perhaps even some of us!) to come back at a later date and analyze what we have found. There are certainly enough artifacts in the Jamestown collection now (millions, literally) that the research can go on for years to come.

I just prefer to be out in the field or in the library, I think.

*Provenience, or provenance, is essentially where an artifact has originated. I have seen both spellings used interchangably, but here is an interesting article on the subject - "Provenance, Provenience, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off": http://archaeology.about.com/b/2006/05/16/provenience-provenance-lets-call-the-whole-thing-off.htm

Friday - marking the halfway point!

I can't believe we've just finished our third week, and that we are halfway through field school. As much as I miss my family and am excited about going home, I already know I will really miss the friends I've made here and that I will hate to leave. What an exciting site this is, even without a major discovery or artifact find (YET!) I hope that I will be able to keep in touch with all my colleagues and friends as we move on to the next stage in our careers. And I'm already dreaming of coming back next summer - I wonder how many 'repeat offenders' they have had return to field school? ;)

Anyway, we began Friday morning with a lecture from Jamie on the Statehouse area and the underlying burial ground. It was perfectly timed, building on all of the information from Written in Bone the day before. It has really helped to be here and see the site - in reading Dr. Kelso's book I had for some reason assumed that the Statehouse building was within the fort walls (I think I was confusing it with another building with underlying burials from the earliest years of the fort's occupation.) Now that I can look around and see the lay of the land, it has helped me to understand why the early settlers built where they did.

We then went back to the field. Danny and Dave spent the first half-hour or so filming an update for the Historic Jamestowne page (find it here: www.historicjamestowne.org/the_dig/ ) The video should start playing immediately. You might want to look for a familiar face, too. :) The guys knew what a big geek I am and that I'd seen every video on the page so far, so they decided to film in my unit. Check out my awesome schnitt technique! Dave is talking about schnitting in the video - removing very thin layers of soil to better expose the features underneath. "Schnitte" is a German word meaning "slice" or "cutting" - all you Pennsylvanians out there remember Scherenschnitte, right? (Although it apparently also is slang for an attractive woman. Oh, the things we can learn from Google!!)

We found some nice artifacts in our unit, too - both prehistoric and historic. Check out the lovely little point that Sarah found screening.

And as Walt was shoveling, this copper straight pin popped out of the ground. Unfortunately, it was so fragile after 400 or so years that it broke as he picked it up.

After lunch we all took the ferry over to the south side of the James to look at how the Smith's Fort house excavation was proceeding. You can see that we've found some features (the darker, more regular soil stains in among the snakey tree roots.)

This feature in particular is interesting. It is hard to see due to the size of the picture, but there is an orangey-colored stain running from left to right across the photo. It has a dark border on one edge, and reads very much like a fence or palisade (very exciting!!) It is cut by several later postholes, some of which look like the scaffolding used when they built the house, which means it must be a pretty early feature - predating the mid-18th century at the latest. It looks for all the world like a utility trench, but numerous people we asked said there was no electricity or water in the house when APVA bought the property, and we know where all the modern utilities connect. Exciting stuff!!! Dr. Kelso agreed with Dave that these features should be explored, and we are planning to test into them next week. (HUZZAH!)

This is a picture of the field school group (and Dr. Kelso, Dave and MA, but minus Alex, who had car trouble in DC after the Smithsonian trip.) Yay, us!

The majority of the group went back to Jamestown for the remainder of the afternoon, and I had two cool finds. Above is a piece of native pottery (although Dave wasn't around to ask what type - I'll have to ask him.) And below is a 1904 Liberty head dime!

It was a good day!!

Best Museum Trip EVER!!!!

We took a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) to view the Written in Bone exhibit and meet the forensic anthropologists who worked closely with the Jamestown Rediscovery team, the Lost Towns of Anne Arundel County Project, and St. Mary's City to put the exhibit together. (Learn more about the exhibit here: http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/forensic_anthro_smithsonian.html ) I find the exhibit especially fascinating because it focuses on the early settlement of the Chesapeake region, which is the area and time period on which I'm hoping to focus my studies, as well.

The exhibit's goal is to educate the public about a forensic anthropologist's role both in assisting law enforcement in modern crime cases, and also in helping archaeologists by providing information and 'filling in the gaps' in the life stories of the people whose remains we occasionally discover. In the above photo, a reproduction of a Native American skull and two 17th century skulls - one European and one African - are shown side-by-side to allow a comparison of features. An archaeologist in the field, having come across an unexpected burial (which will occasionally happen, as some burials leave features that look very much like middens or borrow pits) can use the above comparison to make a preliminary identification and choose the next appropriate step in the process of excavating the remains (or not excavating, depending on the circumstances.)

The exhibit is also wonderful in it's attention to detail. Above is a model of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, whose remains were discovered just outside the palisade at Jamestown. Kari Bruwelheide, who gave us the Written in Bone portion of the tour, described how they worked with costumers and craftsmen at Williamsburg to create accurate period clothing - down to the hand-crocheted buttons on the good Captain's doublet. They used facial reconstruction to show what he would have looked like, and the pike-ish thing he is holding is a reproduction of the Captain's leading staff with which he was buried.

Here is another example of using the story the bones can tell to fill in huge gaps in our human history. Gosnold was a sea captain and explorer, sailing to New England in the years before the Jamestown settlement, and leaving a legacy of place names like Martha's Vineyard, which is named for Gosnold's daughter. He helped to bring together the men who would become the first settlers - including John Smith - and in Smith's opinion was a vital force in the first few months of settlement on the island (high praise indeed from a man who hated to share the limelight!) And yet more Americans can name Miles Standish than Gosnold - the man who disappeared from history. (Of course, he didn't have a Longfellow poem written about him!) The forensics have given us some new information about his life and early death at Jamestown. One can't help but wonder how the colonists might have fared in the first few years if Gosnold had survived and continued to provide strong yet tactful leadership.

This is Mary Anna, laying down in the projection of one of the burials at Jamestown. This area of the exhibit details burials that the JR team believes might be associated with the Starving Time during the winter of 1609-1610. Many of the burials uncovered in the area of the statehouse (today's Archaearium) were obviously hastily interred, sometimes with two burials to a grave. Many of the clues in these burials seem to indicate the colonists dying off in great numbers, some perhaps with an infectious disease. In this time period most bodies were prepared for burial by removing the clothes and then wrapping the corpse in a shroud. However, a few of the bodies in this area at Jamestown had been buried fully clothed, which seems to indicate that the survivors were unwilling to handle the body long enough to shroud and properly prepare it for burial.

And here is a shout out to my Lost Town friends! (In fact, I think you can see Jane's picture in the foreground as she leans in to take a measurement in the burial shaft.) This skeleton belongs to "The Boy in the Cellar" (read more about him in the Written in Bone webcomic here:
http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/comic/ - and please take a moment to fully appreciate that they drew Jane's character with purple hair.) His story is another great example of archaeology and forensics filling in portions of a story that might otherwise never have been told. This poor teenager, recently arrived from England and most likely an indentured servant, was probably worked hard before being beaten to death. He was not in good health, and defensive fractures in his hands and wrists that happened at the time of his death (perimortem) seem to indicate that he died violently. The most compelling part of the story is what happened next: someone - likely a woman - used a milk pan to dig a shallow grave in the root cellar under her floorboards and buried the boy hastily. (You can see a portion of the milk pan near his skull in the above picture.) The sherd of milk pan was crammed in on top of the skeleton, and was discovered laying on his chest when Lost Towns excavated the site 300+ years later. Interestingly, laws were being passed in Virginia and considered in Maryland that made burying a servant in secret a crime . . . so apparently this was not as uncommon an occurance as one might hope.

We also saw a scissor-handled sugical tool from a medical kit donated for posterity in 1653. I found that particular item very interesting, as it looks very similar to the (much rustier!) artifact that we found in our unit yesterday. Both Danny and our lab experts felt strongly that it was a medical tool like foreceps, and we couldn't help but wonder if we had found it's match in this case! I think that was the best part of revisiting this amazing exhibit - so many of the artifacts on display are representative of what we're out in the field finding at Jamestown!

Here is Dave making his squinty face at a skull in Doug Owsley's office. He was trying to figure out if it had come from a site that a friend of his is working on that involved the discovery of iron coffins (which you will see below.) While this skull did come from an iron coffin burial, it was not the right age to be the one with which Dave was familiar. Plus, we had a long conversation about Dave's squinty face in the car on the way up, so I really wanted to include this photo. :D

And this is the man, himself - Doug Owsley, a rock star of forensic anthropology! I have heard about his work for several years, so it was an honor to meet him in person. He talked to us a little bit about his work - involving both modern crime cases and archaeologically-related osteology. He also gave us another mini-lesson on skull feature identification, showing us an Asian skull next to a Native American one to highlight the similarities in both groups.

Here is Kari Bruwelheide, showing us the iron coffin from a recently-discovered burial in DC. The coffin had been completely sealed, and could have been a treasure trove of information on this 19th century burial. Unfortunately, it made the local news broadcast when it was discovered. Vandals came by that night and bashed in the faceplate, exposing the preserved body to the air which then immediately began to cause decomposition. People can be so dumb sometimes.

Next Kari took us down into the basement of the Smithsonian to see the mummy room - and it was AMAZING! She began by showing us some beautifully decorated sarcophogi.

Look at the painted detail! It's lovely. Ellie could probably tell you who the winged figure on the left is - I would guess that it's some Egyptian god, but I am really not sure. Of course, Egypt has really clamped down on the sale, exportation or loan of their artifacts recently - which is understandable, considering how many were taken or destroyed in the last century or two. That makes these artifacts extra-special, as the Smithsonian will not be receiving any new mummy donations any time soon!

This is a bull mummy, and his friend is on display upstairs (one of Ellie's favorite things to see when we visit the NMNH!)

After our tour, some of us grabbed lunch in the cafe and then headed over to the new Human Origins exhibit. They took the same facial reconstruction methods they had used in the Written in Bone exhibit to such good effect and applied them to paeleolithic remains - like Lucy and Ardi. The charming gentleman in the above photo is homo neanderthalensis, a Neanderthal. Doesn't he look like he wants to sell you some insurance? (Actually, when you are up close these reconstructions look pretty realistic - almost like they're about to blink!)

And my last awesome photo of the evening is of Amedeus, one of the other field school students. He and Walt tried out the MEanderthal interactive exhibit, which takes your picture and uses it to create a composite of what you might have looked like as a neanderthal. It was pretty awesome. See a video of the process (and a much better Neanderthal face from Amedeus) below.

Funky. Not in a good way.

Today was really tough. I have been in a terrific funk all day, mostly because having had my family here I miss them more than I did a week ago. :( It was very, very hard to say goodbye, and I think it will probably be a few more days before I regain my equilibrium. Adding to the homesickness, another student decided (for health reasons) to go home, and I can't help but feel a little jealous of her. There were times today - as the temps climbed above 100 degrees and the heat index above 110 - that I fantasized about calling it quits. It was hard today to remember how excited I was at first to be here, as we shoveled and pickaxed our way through more of the brick layer created by the rubble of the earlier church (this church is a reconstruction, although the church tower dates to the 17th century. They just don't build 'em like they used to.)


I didn't even have much luck screening. I had mostly brick, tree roots, and the occasional nail in my screen. Usually something will turn up that gets me excited and keeps me interested, but not today. :P All the exciting finds were made by someone else today. That having been said - I will put the cranky pants away for a while. Look what cool stuff was found today!

David found this beautifully decorated piece of pipestem at a unit a few over from ours. Isn't it lovely? It makes me wonder what the bowl would have looked like . . .

And Gere (which is pronounced "Jerry" - I think I spelled it right!) was shoveling in our unit when this interesting artifact popped out. Those of us in the field guessed that perhaps it was a pair of scissors, and then Danny sent her off to the lab immediately to see if they could X-ray and/or identify it. Word came back that they believe it was a medical tool - maybe like foreceps or really big tweezers? Any ideas, Steph?? :) Pretty interesting, regardless.


And now, a brief word about our volunteers. I mentioned Gere a minute ago (although I don't have a picture of her, unfortunately.) She used to be a teacher, and she worked in Pittsburg for a long time. She was in the field school last year, comes out every Wednesday to volunteer, and works as hard as any of us - despite the fact that she is both a volunteer and a retiree.

And this is Ralph. He reminds me of my grandfather (whose birthday it would have been today, incidentally.) Ralph is a volunteer who shows up at random and helps us screen. He also talks to the public and answers questions, despite the fact that he had surgery a few years ago that left his voice very raspy. Ralph was a Marine in WWII, and he carried a flamethrower on Okinawa. He brought in a picture of himself wearing the portable flamethrower and shared some incredible stories about the battle. He's a terrific guy, and he's only one of the many volunteers who support Jamestown and the Rediscovery team. Their help certainly makes everyone else's job a bit easier, and I certainly appreciate their hard work for a good cause.

This last picture is for Jess, who asked a few weeks ago where we dump the dirt after we screen it. I had never appreciated the luxury of shake screens and dump piles right next to a unit before, and I have never loathed wheelbarrows with the depths of righteous anger that I do now. As you may have noticed in earlier posts, our screens sit right on top of a wheelbarrow, so that as we screen the "empty" dirt goes right into the wheelbarrow. When it gets pretty full, we set the screen on the ground and wheel the dirt to a dump pile outside of the palisade wall (oh, the joys of a public site!) The dirt pile was probably about my waist height when we arrived, and now it is about as tall as I am (I know, I know - that's not saying much. Haha.) We run the wheelbarrow up the dump pile and dump the dirt off the edge, or sometimes walk around to the back of the pile and dump it on the ground. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like much in this picture - I'll have to try to take another with someone standing nearby for perspective. Anyway - here is our dump pile:

And did I mention I hate wheelbarrows?

Smith's Fort

Remember our visit to Smith's Fort last Wednesday? I mentioned that we would be coming back to dig (we are assigned based on our lab groups), so it was my group's turn today to take the ferry over the river and Dave's beat-up old SUV through the woods to Smith's Fort and the units that yesterday's team opened up.

The hole you see in the foreground of this picture is a shovel test pit (STP). Dave used this STP to get an idea of the strata (layers) we would find when we opened this unit, and to gauge how far down we would need to dig before we hit subsoil. Archaeologists also can use STPs on a site to figure out the best places to dig - for example, at Port Tobacco we dug hundreds of STPs laid out on a precise grid (every 5 feet, I think) to get an idea of the artifact distribution on the site. In areas where we found lots of artifacts and building rubble, we could be fairly certain we were in or near the foundation of an old structure. With limited resources and time to dig, STPs can help archaeologists pick the most likely areas in which to find foundations or other features. While STPs are a useful tool in that they can give you a good idea of artifact distribution and strata, they will not be useful in identifying the soil stains that indicate post-in-hole dwellings or similar features on prehistoric or early historic sites.

We were not able to tour the house at Smith's Fort last week, as a big group arrived just before us and the house is too small for more than 12 or so people to tour at one time. However, we were able to see the inside in the afternoon, just before we cleaned up to catch the ferry. It is a beautiful house! It is built in the hall-and-parlour style popular in the 17th and 18th centuries in this area, and dendrochronology (study of tree rings) has dated the house to between 1751 and 1765. Remarkably, almost all of the woodwork in the house is original! (They replaced three boards on the stairway for safety reasons.) On the advice of the restoration team, they painted the walls the beautiful blues and reds that were the original colors. I love the fireplace that is built in to the room, providing lots of storage shelves on either side (I believe he said all of the shelving is original to the house, as well.)

This room is the master bedroom (the children's rooms were upstairs - one for boys, one for girls.) When the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) bought the house in 1933, it was on the advice of (and with a donation from) John D. Rockefeller, Jr. He loved the look of the natural pine after the woodwork had been stripped, and so - in appreciation for all that he had done - the restoration team refrained from painting the woodwork in the master bedroom.

As I mentioned, the upstairs rooms would have been children's bedrooms. While the parents in the master bedroom downstairs would have a featherbed to sleep on, the children would likely have been sleeping on straw ticks (a mattress filled with straw, like in the "Little House" books.) Both bedrooms had similar cabinetry to that found downstairs. In the girls' bedroom, the closet has all it's original shelving, complete with a line of nails with their tips bent to form hooks (on the top shelf where the candles are hanging.)

The girls' room also showcased this little loom, used to weave the "tapes" that in the colonial era would have been used to tie clothing and hats and such. Very young girls were taught to weave on this sort of loom, and it would have been expected that in leisure moments the girls would set to work weaving, as the tapes would be used very frequently.

Most of the artifacts we found were pretty modern - lots of nails and window glass! I think the Smith's Fort folks are hoping we can locate some of the original foundations and/or post holes from the house that documentary evidence seems to indicate was built during the 17th century, well before the current house was constructed. We didn't see too much early stuff, but digging here certainly gives me a new appreciation for all of the wonderful things we are finding daily at the Fort!!

Field School, Day 11

Can't believe the time is flying so fast! We spent today in the lab, washing and sorting a little bit, but mostly hearing an awesome conservation lecture by Senior Conservator Michael Lavin. See Michael talking about the conservation of a pistol found in 2006 here: http://www.historicjamestowne.org/the_dig/dig_2010_03_18.php

He showed us a ton of really fantastic artifacts, both prehistoric (like some mussel shell beads made by Indian women) through the Fort period. You can take a closer look at many of the artifacts that we saw here: http://www.historicjamestowne.org/featured_find/ (I actually got to hold the Prince of Orange medallion and the "Memento Mori" ring, which says "Remember thy death" in Latin.)

Along with each sample artifact, Michael talked about how different materials age in the acidic and poorly-drained clay-y soil at Jamestown, what chemical processes create the corrosion and/or deterioration and how to conserve specific items. For example, he showed us a copper disk - perhaps a coin? - that was completely covered in the green corrosion formed by malachite. The simple answer to cleaning this particular artifact? Lemon juice! (Or citric acid, if you want to sound all professional about it.) Lemon juice will dissolve the malachite. Of course, you can always take a scalpel (as Michael showed us) to 'manually' conserve the artifact by carefully scraping the buildup off.

They are lucky enough to have some really nice equiptment in the lab, as well - including an X-ray machine for pieces of badly occluded iron, and an air-abrasion machine to help removed the rust and corrosion (very, very carefully!!)

My Family is Here! Huzzah!

My parents are in town, and Steve arrived with the girls today. It was great to see them all, and to be able to show them all of the exciting work I have been doing this summer! Ellie loved the scavenger hunt in the Archaearium (which is the museum associated with the James Fort dig - it showcases only artifacts discovered over the last 17 years of digging.)

I was so proud of my girls, too. Abbie asked permission to come look in the screen, and immediately pointed out several pieces of brick. Meanwhile, as Ellie watched I pulled a piece of white quartz flake out of the screen and asked her "what do you think this is?" She glanced at it and said "Oh - that's a flake from when they made a projectile point!" I was SO proud of her - that's my girl!! She is learning how to read features, too - she picked a burial shaft out immediately. Doesn't she look proud of herself as she shows off the flake? :D

Tomorrow we'll walk around Colonial Williamsburg - the girls already have little mob caps to wear! (Isn't this the cutest picture ever?!?)

My last find of the day was a brick - which didn't seem particularly noteworthy at first, considering all the brick we've hauled out of the units in the last 2 weeks! But then I noticed this little indent on one side. I wondered if maybe it might be a maker's mark, so I showed it to Jamie. She lifted the brick to show how the brickmaker would have lifted it while still wet, leaving a perfect thumbprint on the side when it dried! I thought that was pretty cool.

Our walkabout was pretty interesting, too. There are more features showing up in the area that I was in last week, near the feature in my old unit that turned up all the copper scraps. Danny thinks the features look similar to the soldier pits that they found several years ago, near the west wall of the Fort. There is documentary evidence detailing how the first settlers lived in tents or even "holes in the ground" during their first few weeks or months at James Fort, and we're hopeful that these features might at least date to the early fort period.

It sounds like we may get to dig a few of the features before the end of our time here, too! I can't wait!