- Hi, I'm site supervisor
Anna Shackelford,
and we are over here
by our "dead shed" excavations.
And so that's where
we're going to be building
a structure to house
our faunal collection.
But we're going to be talking
a little bit about the features
that we've been finding over here
for this episode of "Dig Deeper."
[music]
[trowel scraping]
Before discussing
our archaeological finds,
Dave Givens will present
the results of the GPR study
that you saw run
in "Dig Deeper" episode 12.
- So once we complete
the fieldwork,
which is really what takes
the most amount of time,
we always run our surveys
in a unidirectional manner
with 1/2-foot or 1-foot intervals.
The quick part is actually the processing
once we go back in the lab.
So let's go ahead
and go into our offices,
and in the air conditioning,
and see what we've found.
Back here in the office,
we've taken all the images
that were done
and interpolated them together
to make a three-dimensional map
of what's under the ground.
In this image, you can see
the test unit holes
that were put out to 12
for where the "dead shed"
or the storage shed's
supposed to go.
And then in the upper portion
of the image, you see
where the building
is in existence,
and we couldn't go
past that building.
Now, the interpolated images allow us
to slice down into the earth,
and geophysical practitioners
refer to these as slices,
because literally, you're going
down in the earth.
Now one of the first things you can see
is this boundary line here.
This is actually an historic feature,
we think a boundary ditch
or some sort of fortification feature.
But you can see it's been cut through,
and now we know,
with the imagery,
that that's actually a utility line.
And in fact, if we zoom in,
you can actually see
the pipe come into play here.
Now, other features that are within here
that are kind of interesting
is there's a power line
that comes out of the structure
and is heading across the field
to the Dale House,
and that's intersected
by another utility line,
which was put in
while I was working here,
which is the network line
to the museum.
Now, these other, darker features
you see here
are plantings from where bushes
were planted behind the museum.
So we're not seeing a whole lot
of historic features,
except for this ditch feature,
within the area of the shed.
But that's normal--
we often encounter
graves and older ditches
and things like that
that you just aren't going to see.
So I'll be curious to see
what they find out out there,
and they, like I said, again,
they should run into these utilities
that were put in over time.
- So a lot of the features
that we've been finding here
over by the "dead shed"--
we have a few modern ones
as well as some
that may date
back to the 17th century,
So back here where field technician
Caitlin Delmas is working,
you can see
we have this line
running fairly east-west
across the unit.
This is actually a modern
telecommunications utility line,
so we're not actually going to dig
down into that at all.
We're going to just uncover the top
so we can map it and know where it is.
We also have another
fairly modern utility trench
running fairly north-south here.
And this one is a little bit older,
possibly dating back
towards the 1950s.
Both of these utility trenches
we actually saw
on our GPR readings
that we conducted
before actually opening
up the excavation site here.
Some more modern features we have
is we've come across a couple of planting holes,
so that's what that sandy pit is right there.
There used to be a tree there,
and there's actually a wire cage
that had been placed down in there
to hold the tree that we had to cut out.
And we have another one
in the unit behind me as well.
As far as older features go,
one of the ones we have in here
right now is this burial.
And you can see that it is running
just about perfectly east-west,
so that's one indication
that it is a burial.
Also, note the size of it--
it's just big enough
for a person--
as well as the color
of the soil in there.
You can see that people
had to dig down through, you know,
the Native horizon,
E horizon, and subsoil,
and once they filled it
all back in,
all of that
got jumbled together.
So with this
modern utility ditch here,
the reason that we were
actually testing into it
is because in those original
ground-penetrating radar surveys,
we originally thought it may be
part of a boundary ditch
that would be quite a bit earlier.
And we were doing this test to see
if we could find any artifacts
that likely would have been trash
placed in that ditch to fill it up
to see if we could date it.
But as you can see
from the sides of the test here,
they're very, very vertical.
And so that's an indication
that it's a more modern feature.
If it was a historic ditch,
the sides would be more sloped.
And you can also see here,
the modern utility trench
actually cuts through this burial.
And another indication
is that in our profile back here,
we can actually see
that this modern utility line
cuts through what we call
the plow zone,
and the plow zone in this area--
I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like.
It's where plows have just been
drawn through the soil,
churning everything up together,
and that's going to be dated back
more towards the 1700s and 1800s,
so after when a lot
of the property ditches
would have been dug
in this area.
And then over on the other side
of the unit,
we also originally had
some plow scars,
and so that's where,
against the subsoil,
you can see these
almost tiger stripe-looking features
where the plow dug down
into the subsoil
and that mixed soil
filled in those divots.
- Hi, I am field technician
Caitlin Delmas,
and I am also working over here
in the "dead shed" area.
But unlike the two units
over there,
I am in a unit
that is a work in progress.
So typically,
if we're in undisturbed soil,
before we can get down
to the historical features and artifacts
that we're really interested in,
we typically have to dig through
some modern things as well.
So in my unit here,
I have a planting hole
very similar to the one
in the other unit.
However, in my unit,
I also had a large amount of gravel,
which you can actually see
in this caramel color
in the profile here.
So we've taken almost all of that
out at this point,
and I am starting to come down
to plow zone here,
which is where we're trying to get to,
and it has a lot of brick inclusions in it,
which is how we know
that we're coming down on top of it.
- So this is what we know
about the site as of August 14.
Please watch future "Dig Deeper" videos,
because we expect to see
additional features as we remove
the plow zone layer.
Also, while our work is currently focused
on the "dead shed" construction area,
the GPR results are compelling enough
that we'll probably come back
to this area for study
in the future.
[music]
