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Sources of Inspiration--Oyster Shells, Plant Remains, and the Enthusiasm of Our Visitors

• July 29, 2008
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We are wrapping up the third week of our session and our immediate excavation goals and techniques have changed drastically. During the first two weeks, we mainly focused on excavating the plowzone. This large layer of soil was almost two feet deep and, as I quickly found out, it was no easy task to dig and screen. As our backfill pile of excavated and screened dirt began to look more like a small mountain, we successfully removed the final units of plowzone, and many features became clear. One clear L-shaped feature is filled with dark soil and oyster shells. Because we are not yet sure what this feature is, previous sessions affectionately nicknamed it the “clambake.”

As we excavated this feature, the importance of understanding stratigraphy became very evident. We learned about how layers of soil and features can be laid down by human activities such as sweeping, discarding trash, or filling depressions in an uneven ground surface, as well as by natural occurrences that shape the landscape. If we had not followed the layers, or strata, while excavating the plowzone, we might have dug too deep or not deep enough, overlooking or not reaching the “clambake” feature. Stratigraphy is even more important to those of us excavating postholes. Since we tackle the youngest dirt first and work back in time, it is important to recognize how postholes may overlie other features and understand how to tell if the dirt is younger or older.

Features are also interesting because they begin to tell stories in a way that artifacts outside of features often cannot. As we excavated the “clambake” we tried to come up with the most feasible story for why the abundance of oyster shells might be in that particular location. Amidst the tales about oysters served here, we considered that the shape of the oyster deposit might have outlined the edge of an outhouse where inhabitants threw their shells out the windows like any other trash. This kind of find delineates an activity area, where human cultural remains are concentrated in a way that shows there was a specific and purposeful activity that took place on that site. Although plowzone artifacts did give us insight into the activities of the inhabitants, features below the plowzone give us a great deal of knowledge about how the land was used at a chronologically specific time (relative to other layers of soil that depict other time periods) and in a very specific location.

Removal of the oyster shell feature that Erin describes has now been completed, and we are still uncertain as to its function. It does not appear to be a filled-in foundation of an outbuilding, since its L shape does not have four sides, but two, and there are no other features associated with it. We have found from our excavations (which produced an early 20th-century fountain pen) that this feature was created relatively recently. Given this discovery, it is very likely that this oddly-shaped trench was left by James Knight’s 1954 excavation. Although he normally oriented his trenches at 45 degree angles to Williamsburg’s street grid, we have reason to suspect that he was every bit as confused by Structure A’s foundation as we are! He did not consider the possibility that the building was a bakehouse, and so may have been searching in line with the building’s foundation for a room surrounding the cooking hearth (which we have now proven never existed). However, while that would explain the time period, as well as the shape and orientation of the feature, it does not explain why so many oyster shells are concentrated within it. They are common throughout the site, and may have been redeposited by Jimmy Knight. While Erin has been puzzling over the amount of discarded oyster shells in the large feature she was assigned, Ben has been focused on gathering botanical remains within the cellar of Structure A.

Things are heating up in Williamsburg as we enter our fourth week of the field school. It is supposed to feel like 105 degrees today. While most of my classmates are digging up features behind the cellar in the baking sun, I am excavating a 1 meter by 1 meter unit in the cellar floor underneath the wonderful shade of the tent. We have found some interesting artifacts in the cellar, from a nearly complete delftware ceramic bowl to a large amount of animal bone, but I am more interested by something else that is coming out of the cellar—basically, the dirt!

As we dig up the dirt we are taking some different samples of it to be processed by the lab, which will tell us different things about the cellar and the inhabitants of the site. One of the samples is called a phytolith sample (or “phyto” for short). This sample is about a cup of dirt that is processed to find mineralized plant cell remains or phytoliths. We use these to see what plants or plant products were housed in the cellar at some point. If this building was used as a bakehouse we should find the remains of associated with baking.

Another sample that we have extracted from the cellar is a pollen sample. This is a sample of dirt taken from underneath a large artifact (which protected it from contamination). The pollen sample will be processed to see the amount and types of pollen present when the cellar floor layer was deposited. This will give us clues to what plants and trees would be around the site at the time that the building was in use. We have to take this sample from a special location because pollen from present-day trees and plants can mix with pollen from the sample and skew our picture of the past. In the cellar we took our sample from underneath an iron concretion or large iron mass. The dirt we pulled out from under it should contain pollen from a time before the iron was discarded on the cellar floor.

One final sample that I just finished taking was a flotation sample. A float sample is about 35 liters of dirt that is taken from a single unit or location on the site that is put through a special screening process called flotation. To take the sample we use a graduated bucket that has liter measures on the sides. We then transfer it to bags that are taken back to the lab. There we have a flotation machine that we use to sift the dirt through two screens with water, which washes away the dirt, leaving two “fractions” or piles of stuff. There is a heavy fraction which sinks and a light fraction that floats. This separates things like small bones and burnt seeds which float from the heavier brick, stone, or other heavy objects which sink. This way we can find smaller artifacts that we would overlook if we just screened the dirt normally. This is a long process and that takes a lot of work so it is not possible to do it with all of the dirt we remove from the site. Instead we are taking samples from different locations around the site. For example, we’ve taken one sample from the base of the steps in the cellar and will be comparing it to another sample taken from the back corner of the cellar, away from its entrance.

In the past several days I have had the opportunity to work on several different areas of the site. I’ve gone from the “clambake” feature to the cellar, from the 20th century to the 18th century. You might assume that digging up the 18th century would be more exciting than digging up something that was deposited 100 years ago or less. That’s certainly what I thought when I began this field school several weeks ago, and to a certain degree it’s true. But history is history, whether it was yesterday or thousands of years ago, and it’s truly fascinating.

While helping out with the children’s activities that are held each morning on site, I’ve witnessed this fascination in the kids who have come to visit. Children of all ages have carefully gone through the screen of artifacts, pulling out modern bottle glass and colonial ceramics, and they are just as excited about one as they are about another. To them, they are discovering history. One little boy visiting the site spent about 45 minutes going though the screen. He examined each piece he pulled out, trying to determine its age and its function, and after just a few minutes he was able to identify many of the artifacts by himself. He sorted his finds into functional categories, and after a time his squeaky little voice rang out with “LOOK! I’ve built a whole house!” A pile of nails and window glass lay on a piece of white paper. In his mind he had used those discarded architectural materials to reconstruct a house, and history had come alive for that little boy.

I met another young girl on while I was digging in the cellar. She was staring wide-eyed at all we were doing while her father was busy asking questions about the site to the student who was assigned to public interpretation for the day. I brought up a bag of artifacts, and in the bag there were several large bones. I also showed her a row of large animal teeth found in a neighboring square of the cellar. She looked at the artifacts, and she decided that since the cellar was too small for a family to live in, it must belong to the family’s horse. I smiled and took the artifacts back down into the cellar and resumed my work. I imagined that her father discussed her interpretation of the cellar with her since he had heard another explanation of how the teeth of livestock might be discarded along with other trash, but while it’s good to teach children the truth, it’s also good to let them think for themselves.

These children had an insight into history that those of us working in the field can easily forget about. We get bogged down by the constraints of dates that are important in interpreting the site, and of course we want to know as much about the site in the 18th century as we can; that’s why we are here. But these children have reminded me how incredibly exciting digging up history really is. In the next week that I am here at Ravenscroft, I am looking forward to excavating all kinds of history. And while I still think excavating the 18th century is at least a little bit more exciting than excavating the 20th century, I’m thankful for the children who have reminded me that digging at all is really very cool.

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