Today’s forecast called for rain but we ended up with an overcast day (excellent for photography of the units) with just a light sprinkle with the ever-imminent threat of rain in the afternoon.
In Y (westernmost unit revealing an as-yet undetermined stone feature as well as a pit), they’ve finished up everywhere except for the dark pit. In terms of artefacts, they’ve found some Staffordshire slipware, Saintonge, two links of an iron chain, and a piece of creamware. The piece of creamware is a bit perplexing since creamware is only invented in the 1760′s, so it plays havoc with our Acadian context. Rob believes it may have fallen out of the profile (the walls of the pit). We would like to have an explanation for it.
Megan and Barb work in Y.
AC (the unit slightly south of the exposed wall), which is on a quest to find another section of the wall, has some stones appearing through the silty soil above. The team is pretty certain that those stones will end up being the wall. Artefact yields from the silty deposit: creamware, pipe stem, pearlware, Saintonge, and Anglo-American redware.
Stones begin appearing in AC. Is this more of the wall?
At AA (the unit with the possible cellar showing up and a bit of the wall trench), they’re in a mottled (mixed up) level of sandy clay. They’re finding creamware, pearlware, nails, melted glass blobs, amongst charcoal and brick fragments. They expect the next layer will be the most interesting one, when they’ll be able to see whether the wall or the building trench of the wall shows up in their extension.
The site is a hive of activity. AA is the unit closest to the camera, in the foreground.
The possible well in V is still in the process of being cleaned up and clarified. Gillian is proving to be the Profile Queen, cutting superb profiles in a complex and difficult unit. Clean-cut profiles are a source of pride for archaeologists and they’re terribly useful since they provide a good sense of the depths, contours and colourations of each different type of soil.
The goal of profiles is to cut them perfectly straight, without damaging the integrity of the wall or the stratigraphy (the layers showing of different soil types). Gill shows quite a talent for it!
Finally in AD (parallel to AA but on the east side of the hedge), our newest unit, they’re now in the third and fourth layer. So far they’ve found mostly creamware and are seeing the tops of some large stones coming through, so hopefully that’s indicative that the feature we see in AA is still showing up on this side of the hedge, but we won’t know for sure until we get down into it.
The 1x1 metre pit AD.
All for now.
Miriam L. C. Fry
Jonathan Fowler
Sarah-Marie McDonald
Stéphane Noël
