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Today, we were joined by some other participants, including Sarah and her father André. Sarah was an excellent young archaeologist, who took particular joy, it seems, in screening.

Sarah and André screening their soil for artefacts.

 

Sarah, trying to work the sifter by herself before André steps in to help again.

Today was productive but we were still trapped, it felt, in that oppressive clay layer and in removing more stone from the ‘window’ area.

The next layer of stone, prior to removal.

Over in the northwest corner, Becki found a trench with a number of stones coming out from our structure on an angle. The operating theory for now is this may be a drain feature.

Located in the bottom right corner of this photo, a narrow trench - full of stone - is emerging from our main feature at a bit of angle. A drain hooking up to a cellar, perhaps?

As Becki and Susan worked further in this area, even larger slabs began to emerge.

Susan clears off the large slate slab, which could be an ideal capstone for a drain.

We still don’t have conclusive evidence that our main feature of interest is a cellar, but at this point we seem to know three things: it was a structure of some kind and it burned down (since the destruction material we’re getting is both indicative of a structure with lots of evidence of burning) and it dates to the Acadian period (since all of our artefacts date from the late 17th and first half of the 18th century). This possible drain seems to seal a cellar as a further possibility.

Kelly and Sarah digging in the 'window' area.

 

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