Uncovering Clues to the Past
- July 17, 2006
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Posted by
Laura Steadman
While artifacts can give us a glimpse into the past and reveal fascinating stories of people who occupied a site before us,they are not alone in their storytelling. Less obvious clues are features, subtle differences in soil color and texture. In the seventh week of excavations at Ravenscroft, we have uncovered two important features after removing the soil that was used to backfill the 1998 excavation area. Above, newly exposed features and stratigraphic layers of soil are revealed as Melissa Gray works diligently to take out the last of the 1998 excavation's backfill (left). Elsewhere on the site, student archaeologists continue to excavate and screen the surrounding layer of plowzone, a layer of soil that was plowed throughout the 20th century (above right).
The first feature, a small portion of a builder's trench, was found under a brick addition to the original cellar (pictured at left, click to enlarge). The scaled drawing (by Heather Harvey, at right) was produced during the 1998 excavations.1 What is a builder's trench and what can it tell us?
The pictures above illustrate how a builder's trench is created (drawings by Heather Harvey and Katie Sikes, click to enlarge). When a building's foundation or cellar is constructed, a trench is first dug. The foundation is then laid inside of this trench, and the gap between the foundation and the trench's edge is then filled back in with dirt. Often, trash (what we think of as artifacts) ends up in the trench fill. Any artifacts that are recovered from a builder's trench, then, can help archaeologists date when the associated building was constructed. The date of the cellar's construction is an important research question at Ravenscroft. We would like to determine whether this building was constructed during the early development of Williamsburg in the beginning of the 18th century, or whether it predated the founding of the second colonial capital, when the settlement in this area was called Middle Plantation. We do not plan on excavating this feature, which would require damaging the later courses of brick that were laid on top of the builder's trench as part of an addition to the original foundation. Instead of excavating the builder's trench, we plan to take a core sample of the soil in the trench. While this technique is unlikely to allow us to use artifacts to help us determine the construction date, it will yield historic pollen from the soil. This sample will be compared to other Williamsburg pollen samples gathered from the Peyton Randolph property and the Governor's Palace, providing additional information about the area's early landscape, before colonial deforrestation and the addition of many non-native plant species impacted the region. We may also be able to determine the time of year the cellar was constructed from the proportions of various plant species represented in the pollen sample.
The second feature uncovered this week at Ravenscroft is a midden, or trash deposit, visible at right as a thick gray layer containing artifacts and fragments of brick (click to enlarge). A large portion of this midden was excavated in 1998, when over 9,000 late 17th- and early 18th-century artifacts (over half of them wine bottle glass) were recovered. Because the midden began accumulating directly above the builder's trench, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation archaeologists determined that this layer of refuse began to be used shortly after the construction of Structure A was completed. From an examination of the artifacts disposed of within the midden, they were able to conclude that the trash pit was in use at least until 1725. The portion of the midden uncovered this week seems to be consistent with the rest of the midden---numerous artifacts are poking out of the midden, much of it wine bottle glass.
The eighth week of Ravenscroft promises to reveal much more!
1. Adapted from Figure 12, in Cooper, Margaret. 1998. The Ravenscroft Site: Archaeological Investigation of Colonial Lots 267 and 268. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series No. 1678. John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, Williamsburg, Virginia.
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Do you still have the pictures from the children's archaeological activities from the summer posted? Where could I find them?