WE SURVIVED!

We survived! We troweled, maddoxed, and shoveled our way through the last week of the field school. The final days in the field seem like a blur of dirt, sweat, and more dirt.

I was working with Miguel in EU 12. This unit and EU 1 (finished shortly thereafter) were the only two units still digging although not necessarily finding many artifacts. EU 12 was an interesting unit for we were convinced that we had hit sterile soil, though the soil was not the brownish-orange subsoil we had found in the other units.

With a little further digging, we found our answer. As the blog related earlier, a dark stain appeared in the northeast corner of our presumed sterile soil (Image 1). This stain became Feature F and yielded the most amount of artifacts for the unit, including a fragment of a George Bauernschmidt bottle (similar bottle fragments from this brewery were found the last two years in Texas and even at the Irish Shrine!)—it must have been a popular local beer. The feature also included a porcelain cleat (for anchoring electrical wire), other ceramics, and a foil wrapper (Image 2).


IMAGE 1: Feature F- Dark soil stain in EU 12


IMAGE 2: Artifacts from Feature F

Before proceeding further, we made a planview map of Feature F in order to identify the dimensions of what and where we were digging. As we continued excavating down into the feature, the stain began to spread out into the rest of the unit. This soil layer was obviously a disturbed historic layer because of the quantity of artifacts and their position within the unit. For instance, the artifacts were mainly from the late nineteenth century (such as a pipe stem with the word [GL]ASGOW), but some of the artifacts were twentieth and late twentieth century— suggesting a mixing of soil layers or an intrusion into an existing soil layer (Image 3).


IMAGE 3: Pipe stem, glass, and ceramics

Below this dark soil layer sat a lighter soil layer with coal and limestone and thick lenses of charcoal. While no modern artifacts were found, a large piece of a grey salt-glazed stoneware crock was found as well as a pipe stem and a blue transfer-print whiteware piece (Image 4). Of course, by the time we had excavated a portion of this layer, the day was over. Yet the large piece of a crock (the largest artifact we had this year) and the absence of modern material suggests this could be an intact historic ground surface from the nineteenth century. The subsequent layers above could have been fill or much later activities, as the presence of a modern foil wrapper suggests. Even more exciting, the charcoal lenses could be associated with the burning of the residence in the 1890s? Still, we only had a few burned artifacts in this soil layer or in the other soil layers. We will have to clean and examine these artifacts in the lab to see if they show signs of exposure to high heat.


IMAGE 4: Grey salt glazed stoneware crock, ceramics, and other artifacts

On Monday, Paul and Peter came back and excavated EU 12 and quickly exposed the brownish-orange subsoil. After digging into this soil just to make sure it was sterile, Paul and Peter mapped the unit’s walls. By the end of a nice hot summer day, they had backfilled the unit and the excavation was officially over.

The final week of the field school was spent in the lab— where the real works goes on to make sense of the excavations and understand the artifacts in their contexts. Let me explain a little further. Artifacts are identified and described in depth in the lab. This level of the analysis allows us to compute quantity, affiliation, and possibly dates of when the artifacts were made and/or commonly used. Armed with this knowledge, we hypothetically can place the artifacts back in their excavation context or soil layers to understand where and how they were deposited in the ground. For instance, if a plastic wrapper was found in a soil layer below a soil layer with a pearlware ceramic dish, then we know that soil layer with the pearlware dish was deposited or modified fairly recently.

Artifact affiliation and context also aids in comparing and understanding the artifacts found at the entire site. For example, artifacts found in similar soil contexts but in different units likely found their way into the ground in a similar manner around the same time period. Thus, we can figure out what is happening over time at the site, and eventually piece together the lives of the inhabitants of Texas— our ultimate goal. Without these scientific methods, we are just simply looking for cool things and can never understand who was using them and why.

Working in the lab is a great relief for some, including myself. This field school has been a great experience. I personally have learned what I enjoy and what I would rather not do. The field school has been invaluable in helping me find the direction I want to take with archaeology. As a collective, I think we all enjoyed the field school and have learned a great deal! Thank you Dr. Brighton.

Now for me, I am not done yet. I have begun the accompanying lab portion of the summer session. This three-week class is going to work on washing, cataloging, and labeling the artifacts from the 2010 and 2011 Texas Field Schools. We are also going to be entering the data into a computer spreadsheet program to allow us to summarize our findings and to begin to analyze them closer.

Today was a rewarding day because Rachel and I finished cataloging the final artifacts of the 2010 Texas Field School (Image 5). We are now going to start washing the artifacts from this year’s field season. Once all the artifacts have been washed we will start the process of labeling and cataloging again! And so goes life in the archeology lab…


IMAGE 5: Erika working in the lab and boxes from three years of excavation at Texas

Erika Kruse
July 18, 2011

A Field Trip To Wye

On Wednesday, we travelled to Maryland’s Eastern Shore and toured the historic Wye House, the current site being excavated by Dr. Mark Leone’s Archaeology in Annapolis Field School. The Wye House, situated on the Wye River near Easton, was settled in the seventeenth century and remains a privately held home. This site became famous through Frederick Douglas’ description of his childhood there in his autobiographies, such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (the first and published in 1845).

Upon our arrival at Wye House, it was impossible to ignore the obvious differences between our urban and industrial sites at Texas and the Irish Shrine with the quiet and pastoral landscape of Wye. On the surface our projects are drastically different, but after a tour of the excavations and property by Dr. Leone, several similarities and historical links became apparent.

First, the lives of the slaves who worked the fields of the Wye House and the Irish immigrants and later Irish-Americans who worked the quarries of Texas were very distinct, but both struggled with long hours of gruelling work. Slaves worked long hours in the fields in all types of weather as well as other tasks while the workers in Texas quarried stone and burned lime for long hours year round. Further, around the 1860s or 1870s, perpetual kilns in Texas were manned year round, twenty-four hours a day. The laborers and people of Texas suffered through numerous hazards, such as explosions in the quarries, the smoke and noise of the trains, and fumes and pollution of the kilns.

Second, the conditions of labor of both the slaves and later tenants at Wye and worker’s at Texas were both structured by the wider social relations in which these groups were situated. While the slaves were locked to the land by force and treated as property, workers in Texas were limited by their immigrant status and the availability of work. Though slavery is not comparable to the labor of free workers, the notion that workers were free to choose is also inaccurate. In the nineteenth century, both groups had few options to escape the life into which they were born and so group members spent their lives laboring often in horrendous conditions.

Another connection between Texas and the rural plantation lies in the industry of both locations. Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, the kilns operated by the people of Texas burned limestone from the quarries to make lime. This lime was used as an agricultural fertilizer to increase crop yields especially as farmers switched from tobacco to other crops such as wheat. A movement towards a more scientific agriculture sought to increase yields and manage and control the production of crops. Similarly, the use of fertilizer is an example of Wye embracing scientific changes in farming practices. We do not have any evidence yet of Texas lime reaching the Eastern Shore though we know it was shipped from Texas to points north and south via the railroad. Perhaps, with some research, we might find a physical connection between Texas and Wye.

As for comparing excavations, I observed that the units being dug by the Archaeology in Annapolis field school differed from our own because they were larger, five feet by five feet or more compared to our own square one meter units. Their units also tended not to be as deep as ours at Texas— perhaps, reflecting the differences in stratigraphy between the two sites. Also, at Texas, we found small pieces of artifacts and only a handful of limestone and brick while at Wye archaeologists uncovered larger artifacts, many bricks, and possible segments of foundations. The number and completeness of these bricks were unlike anything we have found at Texas. Obviously, this disparity reflects their discovery of buildings and other features (aided by Ground Penetrating Radar or GPR) while we have mainly found only artifact scatters.

On the whole, our trip to Wye provided us with the opportunity to see how the same archaeological techniques we learned at Texas and the Irish Shrine can be applied to sites from different temporal and geographic areas. The trip was also a nice break before we headed back to the field for the rest of the week! Thank you to Dr. Mark Leone and the Archaeology in Annapolis Field School.

Katie Cooper
July 5, 2011

A Busy Week in Texas

Well, last week was very busy and equally eventful. On Monday morning, we were greeted by at least forty vultures milling about the site— in and around the units. They promptly flapped away when we approached, but loomed menacingly above us in the trees (Image 1). A bad omen?


Image 1: Vultures looming above the site

After inspecting the site, we found the buzzards were not too happy with our excavations. It seems that they had a taste for the orange flagging tape and the string around our units as well as the datum lines (Image 2). Further, they left many "presents" and feathers around the site. It was a lovely sight and smell to start the morning.


Image 2: Unit "visited" by vulture

Yet their pale soon passed and after restringing the datum and marking the units with new flagging tape, the excavations continued. While the buzzards greeted us from the trees for several days thereafter, we were able to make significant progress exploring the rear yard area of 18BA313.

Excavation Unit (EU 11), which mirrored EU 10 a few meters away to the east, was slightly deeper in depth with several artifacts, like pipe stems and pearlware and whiteware ceramic pieces, at the base of culturally sterile soil (Image 3). We know from our excavations over the past two years that the sterile soil in the area is a reddish-brown clay. In 2009, we decided to test whether this soil was a fill soil or a natural, sterile clay. At about a meter and a half below the surface, this soil disappeared only after we hit limestone bedrock— which seems to make sense given all the quarries around! Still, in EU11, we dug about 20 to 30 cm into the clay just to make sure it was devoid of artifacts. The soil proved to be sterile and we backfilled the unit.


Image 3: EU 11 Wall Profile

Just a meter or two to the north, EU 9 proved to be much more challenging (Image 4). After removal of the post and posthole, we excavated the west half of the unit. We found very few artifacts, and the soil was extremely hard. In fact, we had difficulty excavating with even shovels and a pick. In the sun, this unit caused much sweat and a few blisters before we reached a reddish-brown sterile clay. As in EU11 upon reaching sterile soil, we mapped the different soil profiles and features in the wall of EU 9 prior to backfilling.


Image 4: Katie excavating EU 9

We then concentrated our efforts on the two remaining units, EUs 1 and 12. Away from the gaze of the buzzards, EU 1 sat at the far end of a rear lot close to Church Lane (Image 5). We hoped to encounter a privy in this location. We assumed that this triangular house lot would have its privy at the narrow end of the lot away from the road. While we found several nineteenth-century artifacts like pipe stems and ceramics, we did not locate a privy or any other identifiable feature. Besides a concentration of small bones, the soil stratigraphy was relatively level with the ground surface and shallow. Therefore, we mapped and recorded the soil stratigraphy and once again backfilled.


Image 5: Wall Profile of EU 1

Nearby units excavated in 2009 were equally shallow in depth to sterile soil. While these units were on a different lot, does this mean there was less intensive activity in this area? So far, the small fragments of artifacts and the large number of domestic artifacts suggest that the rear lots were used for a variety of activities associated with the occupants of the homes. Based on the marbles and doll parts found, maybe kids played in the rear yards, especially since the front yards of homes along Railroad Avenue bordered the busy rail line. Similarly, the lot along Church Lane also has a small front yard area, and the occupants may have utilized the rear yard as well.


The last unit, EU 12, was our last hope for finding a substantial feature that may further shine a light on activities in the rear yard area or life in Texas in general. By the beginning of the week, we had some interesting finds from ceramics, like a whiteware ceramic base with a "Thomas China Co." maker's mark, to writing slates and pencils to many nails (Image 6). EU 12 also produced limestone and brick and an assortment of modern and nineteenth-century artifacts (Image 7). Is this debris from the residence on Railroad Avenue that burned down in the 1890s?


Image 6: Erika holding a whiteware ceramic base with "Thomas China Co." maker's mark


Image 7: Miguel and Erika excavating the first soil layer of EU 12


EU 12 initially contained different soil layers than what we had encountered in the other units. Yet, after excavation of these first layers, it was clear that they potentially were disturbed fill layers. The vertical positions of the limestone and brick as well as the large patches of reddish-brown clay suggest that this soil and rock had been mixed and redeposited as some point.

Further, we found artifacts, such as a Frozen Charlotte's doll head (Image 8) and other ceramics, but in the same context as plastic. By the end of the week, we had some help from one of Ed Doyle's (who ran the bar at the corner of Church Lane and Railroad Avenue in the early twentieth century) descendants. With her help, we found a feature in the soil that contained coal and limestone. By the next day, after excavation, this feature turned out to be a soil layer. Yet, we will have to see what lies beneath next week and what the profile of the feature looks like.


Image 8: Frozen Charlotte doll head from EU12

Finally, we had an opportunity to visit Wye House, a plantation where Frederick Douglas was enslaved and where the other field school is running. As our field school winds down next week, Katie will soon give us an account of that visit and how it may relate to Texas.

Adam Fracchia
July 4, 2011