Ravenscroft Blog

Wrapping Up Another Field Season at the Ravenscroft Site

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:52:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

Derek and Rachel excavate two one-meter portions of the builder's trench within Structure A’s cooking hearth.

Our field school at Ravenscroft has now come to an end for this final summer. As plans are being made to backfill most or all of the site, we spent our final week attempting to gather as much information from the remaining features as we could without excavating them, by preparing maps, photographs, and soil descriptions for each feature, and using visible artifacts on the surface to date them. We have also been working around Structure A’s unusual exterior cooking hearth. Teaching Assistant Derek Miller and Intern Rachel Horowitz have been busy sampling portions of some early 18th-century midden (trash) layers and Structure A’s builder's trench north of the cellar in this area, where the trench is much wider than it was on the eastern side of the building.

Since the 1998 excavation removed most of the midden layers, we need to investigate this area on the cellar’s north wall in order to clearly understand which midden layers are older than Structure A, and which might have been deposited during the use-life of the building. We plan to leave the rest of the builder’s trench and midden areas intact in case future archaeologists need to revisit them sometime in the future. Our construction date for Structure A, based on known production dates of ceramic artifacts from the builder's trench, still has not changed, remaining at 1720.

We have also been busy adding the final touches to a complete site plan which shows every feature on the site (except for James Knight’s 1954 exploratory trenches).

Derek trowels his way through the construction rubble buried in Structure A’s builder’s trench.

Ashton and Emily work to complete one of our site maps.

As you can see, most features overly others, making the site quite complex! Many of these features represent two fencelines—a late 19th- or early 20th-century fenceline running east to west near the northern edge of our site, and an 18th-century fence, depicted on the Frenchman’s map (see this previous post). This earlier fenceline was maintained and repaired often into the 19th century, leaving a new posthole each time an old fencepost was replaced. Earlier in the season, we thought we might have found a smaller fence dividing colonial lots 267 and 268, even though they were owned by the same people throughout most of, if not all of the 18th century. We have since proven that this was probably not the case since there is no evidence of a fenceline between Structures A and B. A feature we earlier thought to be a posthole turned out to be an animal burrow, long since collapsed and filled in! Unfortunately, we have found no evidence of the multiple “convenient” outbuildings described in 18th-century property advertisements for lots including this one. They were apparently located elsewhere on colonial lots 267 and 268.

Just as we have begun to think that the Ravenscroft site has little new to tell us, an exciting surprise appeared among the artifacts last week as our excavations came to a close. A complete quartz projectile point (popularly known as an arrowhead) emerged from one of our 18th-century postholes. Such early finds are unusual in historic Williamsburg, where Native American settlements prior to colonization appear to have been rare. This is the first evidence at the Ravenscroft site of people hunting in the area prior to the Middle Plantation settlements of the 17th century.

Now that our field school excavations are finished, staff archaeologists Andrew Edwards and Meredith Poole of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Department of Archaeological Research will be leading a small crew of dedicated interns and volunteers to complete the excavation of our northern builder’s trench sample and some of our units at the south end of the site for the next few weeks.

Mapping and Excavating Features at Ravenscroft

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:30:00-0400

Posted by
Ashton Smith

Ashton takes an elevation with the site’s digital transit.

Before field school at the Ravenscroft site I had a lingering question on my mind: What does an archaeologist actually do? Having had no prior experience in archaeology all I could think of were two words…digging and sifting. However, after participating in the field school for nearly four weeks, I have quickly learned that archaeology is more than just digging and sifting, in fact, there is just as much important paperwork and calculations to be completed.

During the first couple weeks we, the field school students, had the opportunity to participate in all the daily procedures and activities typically practiced at the Ravenscroft site. Taking elevations was one of those routine procedures that we all quickly became familiar with. Before excavating anything on the site, we had to record the opening height above sea level using a laser transit. Then we were ready to dig a layer of soil, but features (stains in the soil left by human activities on the site) were handled differently. We didn’t just begin tearing out the features with our trowels; instead we had to map the surface of each feature on graph paper before beginning excavations. Mapping is an important archaeological procedure because it provides an accurate illustration of a feature’s shape for future analysis. In addition, mapping gives archaeologists a better visual understanding of what the occupational surface looked like around the time the foundation was built. At first, mapping features was a confusing concept for me, but once I had the chance to do it a few times I eventually got the hang of it. Once my mapping skills became more refined I had the privilege to map the profile of an exquisite series of midden (trash) layers and a posthole. After the layers were carefully measured and mapped I could then clearly see the different layers present on the profile. Having the chance to map this context was not only a rewarding experience for me because it put my artistic ability to good use, but it also gave me a better understanding of the technical side of archaeology that I had not previously known.

Left: A photograph of several midden layers, once a modern sewer trench had been excavated. Right: a profile map of these layers measured by Laura and drawn by Ashton to a scale of 1:10.

Posted by
Rebecca Driscoll

Intern Meagan Schuller excavates the second in a series of neighboring or overlapping postholes. The first, already excavated, is to the left of her trowel. A third, older posthole, is below it and to the right.

We’re coming up on the last days of our fourth week on the Ravenscroft site. It’s hard to believe we’re a little more than a week away from the end! The progress we’ve made is incredible. This week, we’ve worked on scraping away one last layer in the cellar to reveal what we think is the original floor. There are a few depressions in the clay floor that very well could be 18th-century footprints—very exciting. We’ve also continued excavating features such as Jimmy Knight’s trenches and posthole/postmold combinations in the area outside of the cellar. (A posthole is a stain left in the ground by a hole dug to set in a post for a fence or building. A postmold is the stain left when the post itself is removed and the ground filled in.) While postholes may not seem as interesting as other features, they are an important part of the site. People don’t usually do anything without a reason, so the postholes obviously represent something that was necessary to the owners of the property. Did these fences keep out threats, or mark boundaries? Once postholes are found and can be connected, the purpose of the fence may become clear.

Another interesting fact about postholes—and something that is a usual occurrence at the Ravenscroft site—is that people will not generally take down a fence only to construct an entirely new one on the same line. Rather, if a post is decaying or has fallen over, it will be taken out and, depending on its condition, either stuck back in, or a new hole will be dug close by for a different post. This results in postholes overlapping one another as fences are maintained or repaired, and can cause confusion for those of us who are trying to figure out which is the youngest posthole or postmold (youngest being the one we excavate first). I encountered an especially frustrating cluster of postholes earlier this week. What appeared to be only two features close together soon multiplied to four—perhaps even more—as we dug further down into the soil. Needless to say, I am no longer working in that area and have moved on to less complicated tasks!

Our crew covers the site to protect it from erosion during flooding summer storms.

The weather has continued to influence our progress on the site. Earlier in the week, we had a couple of days that really felt like summer. During those days, I had trouble imagining how the colonists survived such extreme heat in their conservative clothing and no air conditioning. It was hardly bearable in T-shirts! Thankfully it cooled down as the week progressed, but we faced another facet of Virginia weather—thunderstorms. Thankfully, the two storms that rolled through the area came during the evening, but our site was still affected by them. Despite the tarps that we had put over the area at night, the rain managed to find its way into the site and collected in some of the postholes and trenches, and turned a good amount of the ground into mud. This made digging, which can be awkward enough on its own at times, difficult and dirty work. As much as we try to avoid it, I think we’ve left our own marks on the site in the form of footprints.

Posted by
Jen Gnik

A small figurine fashioned from excavated and screened clay—a mascot that Derek Miller playfully molded to watch over student feature excavations!

One of Ravenscroft’s distinguishing characteristics is its multi-layered occupational sequence. It may appear to visitors that we are indiscriminately digging a big hole; we are in fact, adhering to a stratigraphic modeling technique known as the Harris Matrix method. We excavate the youngest layers first, and work our way backward in time, tracing our roots all the way to the earliest evidence of colonial occupation. However, as we pull the discarded and long-forgotten fragments of lives once lived out of the dirt, we deposit our own material culture (artifacts, such as the nails and flagging tape we use to grid the site) as a testament to our transient settlement at Ravenscroft.

The reality of our time here as students is designed to augment our educational experience. Our individual goals are as significant as the collective project. But what will our endeavors mean in the future? We explain to interested tourists our project’s findings, objectives, and history, but often their questions have a more personal quality. They want to know who we are and what we are doing, where we go to college and what we are studying. They want to know where we are from originally and what inspires us to pursue archaeology. Essentially, they are curious about us as we are curious about our historical subjects.

One day, it will be our material culture that is subject to archaeological inquiry. If William and Mary scholars choose to re-excavate Ravenscroft in three-hundred years, how will they interpret the traces of our presence we leave behind? They may read our blogs and study written articles; correspondingly, they may find the seeds from a watermelon one of the students brought in for us to share one afternoon, or a clay figurine fashioned out of backfill. But how will they interpret our methods or understand our perspective? We deconstruct the site, layer by layer to uncover the past, while simultaneously laying down evidence of our present for the future.

Posted by
Katie Sikes

All of us are in the process of creating the archaeological sites of the future each day. Just as the residents of colonial Williamsburg did in the past, we all produce trash on a daily basis, and we also leave features behind in the ground whenever we build a fence, dig a hole to plant tree, or till a new garden bed. Many of our activities leave their traces in the ground beneath us, a material record which (unlike our tax records, marriage certificates, and other documents) we do not consciously or intentionally produce. Visitors often ask us if we have found anything, and are amazed to hear that we bring back hundreds of artifacts to our lab each day. In fact, given that people can’t help but leave trash and alter the landscape around them, it would be almost impossible not to find something in any densely settled town. As Jen points out, we ourselves have altered the Ravenscroft site in the process of studying it. The excavation area, once backfilled, will leave a gigantic feature here—the result of our archaeological inquiry. Just this morning I noticed a large scatter of sand leaking from the sandbags we use to secure our tarps over the site each night—another feature created here by archaeologists, rather than removed by them!

Posted by
Laura Buchanan

One of our final photographs of Structure A’s cellar floor, stripped of all its layers of soil, features, and artifacts.

Now that we have entered our final week of field school, it almost seems like a race to finish. We are very diligently mapping and photographing all the features we don’t have time to excavate. Some students have been working on specific groups of features for nearly a week, and are carefully continuing to excavate intersecting postholes and sort out complicated stratigraphy. We have finally finished excavating the cellar floor — and it has taken nearly a day just to trowel the surface clean for a closing photo.

In the last few days, we are doing our best to help each other out. Someone always needs a hand taking a closing elevation (the height above sea level of the deepest part of a posthole or other feature), drawing a map or profile, or sifting some dirt before we leave for the day. I must say, I expected archaeology to be all about the dirt. I find it fascinating to learn about different types of ceramic artifacts or to recognize changes in soil color and texture. But as time has gone on, I have learned that working at an archaeological site is not just about the dirt — it’s about the people.

While we study material objects, it is important to remember that ultimately, it is not the artifacts that matter, but what they can tell us about the people who used them. One of our major goals is to uncover the stories of the people who didn’t leave documentary evidence (historical records) written from their own points of view, like perhaps the enslaved African-Americans who may have worked and lived in Structure A if it did function as a bake house.

Working on an archaeological site requires a lot of patience, cheerful cooperation, and teamwork, and so often leads to lifelong friendships.

Another important part of archaeology at the Ravenscroft site is to share what we find with the public. Each of us has had experience telling visitors about the excavation and site history. It’s a really great experience to help people get excited about what we’re doing. On one of my shifts at our public interpretation table, I encountered a biology teacher who was most excited about the effort and passion we as students put into digging the site, but most visitors remark that work looks very tedious. Well, it can be. There is always troweling, screening and cleaning to do, elevations and photos to take, and maps to draw. It's not only the finds that make it fun—the first time you could identify a piece of white salt-glazed stoneware, or when you find a feature—it’s the jokes and conversations. One time it took six people to hold up shade tarps to provide even lighting for a photo, and by the end we were all laughing. Working at the site with all kinds of different people, you get a chance to get to know each other while excavating. Most of us walk down to the Cheese Shop on Duke of Gloucester street for lunch on Wednesdays. Aside from learning all about field methods, what I will remember best from the field session are the people—from Jenny, the escaped slave who may have lived here, to “Jimmy” Knight who excavated here in 1954, to the little girl who so meticulously sorted through seeds during the children’s activities yesterday, to all of us who have spent the past month digging together.

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

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:55:00-0400

Posted by
Erin Soller

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.”

This pile of dirt, accumulated by the bucketful after being screened for artifacts, is one of two piles we have produced this summer alone.

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.

Ashton measures the depth of the as yet unidentified oyster shell feature in front of him to create a scaled map of the feature’s vertical dimension.

Erin removes the last remaining portion of this L-shaped feature.

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.

Posted by
Katie Sikes

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.

Posted by
Ben Pryor

Grateful for the shade, several of our crew work within the cellar, under a large pole tent that helps us to manage flooding during summer storms. Sadly, these cramped quarters don’t afford room for everyone on the hottest days!

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.

Ben samples the soil from a layer deposited within the cellar, possibly during the use-life of Structure A.

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.

The volume of Ben’s flotation sample from the cellar is carefully measured and scooped into a bag tagged with information about its location on site.

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.

Posted by
Katie Hidalgo

Katie and Laura excavate a large 20th-century feature filled with oyster shell (jokingly nicknamed “the clambake”).

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.

Our public interpretation volunteer Rachel Gorman (who earned her stripes in the first session of field school earlier this summer) sets up children’s archaeological activities on site. A variety of fun and educational programs have been offered to visitors on site each morning by Department of Archaeological Research Staff Archaeologist Meredith Poole with help from our students and interns.

As part of our public programs on site, Ben is set up and ready to teach kids a little bit about how ceramic artifacts are analyzed in the lab by fitting the fragments together to see if they form bowls, plates, or tea cups.

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.

The Second Week of the Second Session -- Slogging Through the Rain!

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:37:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

The second session of this year's field crew is still relatively new to the site but has already met several challenges, from learning to read the soil beneath their workboots, to dealing with inclement weather. Some of the new student archaeologists comment on the events of the past week at Ravenscroft.

Posted by
Andrea Pruett

At the beginning of the second week of working on the Ravenscroft site, we have been working in an area just north of Structure A, in the hopes of finding some remnants of other activities on the site and/or evidence of other buildings on the property. Last week we finished the removal of the topsoil, and this week we are working through the layer of soil that was built up after years of plowing this area for an agricultural exhibit in Colonial Williamsburg.

Members of our second session of the field school begin to excavate a thick layer of plowzone in several new 1x1 meter units (picture taken July 3).

Upon reaching the base of this "plowzone," interesting features are becoming visible. The 1 by 1 meter unit that I am working in has begun showing a portion of some of the trenches dug and then refilled in 1954 by draftsman/architectural historian James M. Knight, when he was searching the area for brick and mortar foundations to rebuild. Also visible is an unknown feature that will need more detailed excavation to identify. While screening, or sifting, through the excavated dirt, vast amounts of artifact fragments have been found--pieces of various ceramics, glass, nails, shells, and animal bone, many of which are from the more recent past. (Apparently RC Cola was very popular here in the mid-twentieth century!) While we sometimes joke and ask each other, "have you found anything good?" in reality all artifacts play a significant role in determining the happenings of this site and, just as important, when they happened. By mapping exactly where on the site artifacts are found, what these objects are and when and where they were originally manufactured, archaeologists are able to get a better picture of when this site was occupied and what daily life might have consisted of at that certain period of time in history.

Left: Andrea working to remove the plowzone in her unit. Right: Ben trowels beneath the plowzone to reveal the features below.

When first approaching the site, the intrigue of Structure A got me excited to "dig in" and maybe be able to assist the archaeologists in discerning what this building looked like, who lived here, and what they did. After realizing that we wouldn't be in the cellar of Structure A for some time and would be working just north of it I have to admit I was a little disappointed. However, after working in this area I have come to quickly realize its importance to the overall interpretation of the Ravenscroft site and have found that it stirs up just as much intrigue and excitement as though working within the structure itself. After studying the history of the site and noting historical references to other features on the property, such as orchards and other outbuildings, the idea of possibly being present when even a glimpse of this sort of discovery is made is thrilling. Inasmuch as this work can seem rather repetitive and meticulous, it is also exhilarating. We are digging our way through history. As the layers peal off, we are getting a clearer picture of what may have happened here over time; or, as it often seems, we are presented with more questions to answer. Even though finding fifty sherds of the same ceramic seems dull and insignificant to most, piecing those sherds together and seeing the beauty of the completed object makes all the work unearthing those sherds in the first place well worth it.

Posted by
Nikki Hudson

Nikki hard at work as thunder clouds loom overhead...

As I sit to write this entry we are well into our second week of field school at the Ravenscroft site. We have had some delays this week due to the weather. Archaeology is obviously done in the field, and we are always subject to the whims of Mother Nature. We pretty much work through anything, (actual) temperatures over 100 degrees and thunderstorms or heavy rain being the few exceptions. Earlier this week we experienced our first shortened day due to a fast moving thunderstorm. The first rumble was dismissed as the Fife and Drum Corps echoing distantly from Duke of Gloucester Street. The second was much more vocal and obvious in announcing its impending arrival. Typically it takes around 15 to 20 minutes at the end of each day to close our site. This includes troweling up any loose, packing up equipment such as buckets and shovels, and covering the site with waterproof tarps. The day the thunderstorm rolled in, the site was closed in around 5 minutes--amazing how the threat of lightning can inspire us to move quickly!

This has been an especially wet week. Excavation can take place in the rain, as long as it isn't too much at one time, however, once you begin digging through mud instead of dirt it's time to call it a day. Yesterday we set out ambitiously. Knowing a large rain storm would be arriving and our time would be limited, we were able to work for about two hours before packing up. The decision was made to return after lunch and a light drizzle made for a very muddy hour of digging before the rain got too hard and the site too messy to work effectively. Mornings after rain storms often involve having to bail water out of our tarps before uncovering the site. Keeping the site as dry as possible is important. For instance, the northern part of our site has several exposed features which are still being excavated, and if these get wet or muddy it can change their form and could possibly ruin their further analysis.

Water on an archaeological site can also sometimes be helpful, in controlled amounts of course. Often water is sprayed on features to help bring out changes in soil color to help with identifying where a feature starts or stops and is also used when taking photographs to ensure that their color is even. I suppose you could say archaeologists have a love/hate relationship with water! The rest of the week promises to be a wet one, but we have luckily not had to deal with the other problem of extreme heat, although it is July in Virginia and it is sure to come!

Posted by
Emily Harger

I recently moved to Virginia to attend the field school at the Colonial Williamsburg Ravenscroft site. I am originally from Michigan, a student at The University of Michigan-Dearborn majoring in Anthropology, but my strong interest in archaeology lured me down to Virginia to finish my undergrad career. I figured that this site would provide me with some insight into what an archaeologist's job entails. I also knew that the area was rich in historical artifacts, and that it would be a great opportunity for me to learn more about the origins of the area, and would provide a window into the early days of this country.

Currently we are wrapping up our second week out here. The landscape behind structure A is beginning to unfold as we are finally peeling away the remaining plowzone (a layer of soil that has been plowed several times since 1954). The units of plowzone that I have excavated contained many artifacts--oyster shells, glass, animal bones/teeth, and several different types of ceramics. These types of artifacts were most prevalent, but the most interesting artifact found within my unit was a "half dime" that dated back to 1856. I didn't know that such a coin had ever existed.

Features such as James Knight's 1954 trenches are now finally visible beneath the plowzone that we have removed. While working in my unit, it was exciting for me to be able to identify the trench on my own. As we reached subsoil (the yellow clay areas of soil that are "sterile" because they predate any human occupation), it became more apparent that we were finding areas that contained features due to the darker color of the soil. The Jimmy Knight trenches are darker in color which signifies to us that they need further excavation because they reflect a past activity on the site that interrupted the natural soil layers.

The removal of plowzone has been a very physically demanding process, especially in this 100 degree weather. We arrive on site at approximately 8:30 am and from that point we "dig in." I had never worked outdoors like this before, digging in the dirt under the hot sun, but it was incredibly rewarding with each completion of a unit (a 1 by 1 meter square). It was also, not to mention, a fantastic workout. I soon realized the importance of having a good, sturdy pair of shoes to wear out in the field due to the long hours of being on my feet in squatting positions and kicking a shovel into the solid ground. Did I mention the part where this is all actually fun? It certainly is.

Posted by
Jessica Taylor

I was speaking with a visitor about the cellar this morning and the possible uses of Structure A--a bakehouse, a store, or some sort of outbuilding for the main house Structure B. The conversation turned to the possible occupants of a Structure A's loft--enslaved residents of urban sites were known to live in the upstairs areas of houses and outbuildings. The visitors' tones of voice turned soft, and they leaned closer towards the cellar to get a better look. Archaeology, to me anyway, is all about representation, the underrepresentation of some groups of people in history, and overrepresentation of the individuals that made enormous, arching changes in history--like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. It's important to ask the values and habits of the everyday person, whose history is not often written about. Their influence is ever-present.

The blending of ethnicities into American culture gives archaeology power and purpose. Earlier this week, my excavation partner and I found objects related to the leisure time of average people of the early twentieth century--marbles, an earring made of rhinestones, and fragments of RC Cola bottles. It isn't the "treasure" some visitors ask for, but it is representative of a time that's foggy in the minds of locals and tourists, when a vibrant African-American community was developing in this area of Williamsburg.

The "race, class, and gender" question is intimidating and all-consuming to many academic fields, but in representing the lower and middle classes, including African-Americans that occupied the Williamsburg area for centuries, historical archaeology and its public outreach has a new, empowering message. Many visitors can relate to those middle classes. A few can even remember playing with marbles in the backyard and drinking Coke or some other regional cola out of glass bottles. Such unwritten records become important in understanding the full scope of history, and visitors from all walks of life and ethnicities can thoroughly grasp their own heritage through an archaeological record that feels like their own piece of the past.

News from the Trenches

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:58:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

Our crew for the second session of field school (left to right): Teaching Assistant Sarah Chesney, Intern Ari Caramanica, Intern Rachel Horowitz, Teaching Assistant Derek Miller, Emily Harger, Ben Pryor, Nikki Hudson, Jen Gnik, Andrea Pruett, Jessica Taylor, Ashton Smith, Katie Hidalgo, Erin Soller, Rebecca Driscoll, Laura Buchanan, and Teaching Assistant/Field Director Katie Sikes.

As we begin the second session of the field school, much has changed at the Ravenscroft site. Our first session students completed their excavations of James Knight's 1954 trenches in the new northern section of the site, and began working on some of the older features below last week.

Left: The northern 2008 excavation area showing features after the removal of James M. Knight's 1954 exploratory trenches. Right: One of the older features visible beneath an excavated trench.

We have found that a line of eighteenth-century postholes we discovered and began excavating last year immediately to the west of the cellar does appear to extend further north into our new excavation area, and may be a fenceline depicted on the 1781 Frenchman's map.

The Frenchman's Map, a plan of Williamsburg drafted by a French officer during the Revolutionary War.

On the other side of the cellar, we have also found another possible posthole that is of similar size shape and color to one we excavated last year, and directly north of it. Once excavated, we will know for certain whether they are consistent in form and whether their artifacts date to the same period. If these postholes are also part of a fence line, it is possible that this fence marked the property boundaries between colonial lots 267 and 268. An apparent need to separate the properties would be interesting, since we know from our chain of title that both lots were owned by the same person throughout most, if not all of the eighteenth century. Our new students this week have begun to open up 18 new one-meter-square units, connecting the two excavation areas by removing the topsoil and plowzone layers of soil in this portion of our site, helping us to gain access to some of the new features, which are now only partially visible.

Student archaeologists from our second session of field school open up the units separating the 2006 and 2008 excavation areas.

Andy Edwards' exploratory excavations searching for the edge of the plowzone in hopes of finding intact stratigraphic layers from the eighteenth century have been disappointing so far. While we were able to relocate the sewer trench near Nicholson Street, and excavate another portion of it, the walls of the excavated trench did not reveal the missing layers we had hoped to find.

In the cellar, we have removed the layer of coal and coal dust that we believe to have been deposited as Structure A was torn down and the cellar was filled in. The most recent artifacts retrieved from this layer date to the late eighteenth century, supporting our belief that this building is among the buildings depicted (and therefore still standing) on the Frenchman's map in 1781. Beneath this layer are many bricks, probably from Structure A's now demolished portions above ground. We have also found many places where bricks once rested on the floor of the cellar, but were then removed, leaving an impression that was filled with coal when the cellar was filled in. These brick sockets were probably left when people pulled many of the bricks from Structure A's rubble out of the cellar to reuse them in other masonry projects.

Left: Archaeological Intern Rachel Gorman begins to excavate the cellar's sump. Right: the sump after the removal of the coal and debris that filled it.

The cellar's earthen floor is much more uneven than we would have expected, and contains many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artifacts—ceramics, animal bone, pipe stems, and fragments of wine bottles. Many of them are concentrated in this feature (below), which we are currently excavating. We have also found the cellar's sump—a lower area in the cellar that allowed water to collect and drain, helping to keep the floor dry. When the building was torn down, this square depression in the cellar floor was filled with the coal that was dumped into the cellar, leaving an obvious feature for us to find.

Field Director Katie Sikes excavates an unidentified feature in the cellar's floor, loaded with eighteenth-century artifacts.

Outside of the cellar, Teaching Assistant Sarah Chesney has completed her excavation of the builder's trench, and the artifacts in her screen have been consistently seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century. We still have not found anything from the trench that is more recent than 1720, so that date remains the earliest possible date of construction for Structure A.

Left: Sarah excavates the last of the builder's trench. Right: The builder's trench along the cellar's east wall.

Summing Up the Past Five Weeks - The End of Our First Field School Session

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:27:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

Our first five-week session of field school has now ended. While we look forward to working with a new student crew, we are sorry to give up a team that has worked well together and developed into very competent field archaeologists. The last of our student posts reflect upon their experiences here. (It's easy to tell that James is an English major!).

Posted by
James O'Donnell

On May 26, 2008, W&M undergrads returned to Williamsburg after a short summer break, eager to dig. One student recounted the rainy days of his youth impersonating Indiana Jones with a plunger, straw hat, and jump rope for a whip. Ravenscroft proved less romantic, but appealed to the maturing intellects of the field school students. Guided by knowledgeable grad students and PhD candidates, Tribesmen and women sharpened their tools and technique beneath the swollen sun and Colonial Williamsburg's smothering humidity. Lectures were a welcome relief from the heat, and offered insight into the many "trowels" that can lead to various careers in the field of archaeology. Dr. Brown, Andy, Meredith, and Katie shared their stories from digs, contributing to the developing oral tradition of the students in a way that only experience and zeal for the work can. It was obvious from the start of field school, that those involved with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation really "dug" archaeology.

Dr. Marley Brown, the field school's professor, and Director of Archaeological Research for Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, confers with Teaching Assistant Jenny Camp.

The labor was tedious but exciting, as excavators awaited what lay hidden beneath them. The first soil layer of topsoil yielded no artifacts, but was good practice for the remaining layers. In the next layer of plowzone, unit by unit, the class shoveled and screened. The first finds sparked imaginations, and questions. As we progressed, and depressed the earth, the students became more comfortable with the abundance of found artifacts. Questioning was teamed with speculation, especially as the ceramics identification exam approached.

In the thick of the five-week semester and plowzone excavation, the volume of iron nails, wood fragments, and bright to dull colored glass and ceramic sherds led to a sun-baked monotony broken only by the screech of metal on oyster shell. The familial atmosphere created by Dr. Brown, the interns, and the teaching assistants gave the undergrads a proud giddiness upon discovery of a less common, or intact, artifact. Buttons, spoons, eighteenth-century toothbrushes made of bone, thimbles, and vividly colored glass and ceramics were discoveries of interest to the students, professionals, and visitors.

Most evident from the visitors' reactions at Ravenscroft was that the longer one spends in the field or archaeological lab, the more numb one becomes to the splendor of artifacts being excavated. The students were given a chance this summer to explore the unwritten history of the Ravenscroft site, and they did, but also because of the well-rounded educational process they saw the options available for archaeologists in the lab or on site. For some, Ravenscroft is the first of many digs, and for others, it may be the last, but all of us now understand the process of archaeology better and have a greater appreciation for the selflessness and professionalism required to be part of an excavation.

Posted by
Mike Stover

A typical assemblage of artifacts. We do occasionally find eighteenth-century coins, but rusty nails, shells, and small pieces of glass or ceramic sherds are far more common.

As an undergraduate student at the college of William and Mary, I signed up for this class exploring the opportunities that the college offered and also to boost my GPA, so I was a complete novice in the archaeological field and in the lab. Before this excavation started, I thought that we would be digging in old stone structures and finding a variety of artifacts like pottery, papers, old shillings or currency, knives and guns, maybe even human bones. Now I know that most of these are highly unlikely finds. Being a beginner, one of my first exciting finds was an old-looking coin from the plowzone layer, and I could hardly hold back my excitement. Thoughts were running through my head. Could it be a shilling or other form of currency? Would it be worth something to a nearby museum? Sadly, the coin turned out to be a 1985 United States penny, worth a measly cent. From that point on I knew that archaeology was not always about finding spectacular artifacts. It was about using everyday artifacts to learn about the history of the site or structure, the people who lived there and the habits of the colonial residents who inhabited Williamsburg in the 1700s.

The history contained in an artifact also varies. For instance, animal bones and seeds can tell us what the colonials diets were by giving information about when people butchered the animal or harvested the plants. Other artifacts, like ceramics (or pottery) and glass can show us how technology changed over time, and allow us to guess when certain events in history took place and determine the age of structures. So the artifacts found at our site are more than pretty objects to look at. These artifacts can help us fill in the missing parts of Colonial Williamsburg's history.

Posted by
Ryan Woolfolk

Ryan and Mike washing some of their artifacts on site.

After signing up for the archaeological field school at the beginning of the summer, I felt very confident that I would be taking a fairly easy class so that I would be a little less stressed during the next fall semester. Shortly after meeting on the first day I discovered that my fantasy of an easy six-credit course was far from reality. Although we gave up five weeks of our summer to dig at times when the site reached temperatures in the triple digits and myself and other classmates worked from morning to late afternoon five days out of the week, this experience has been one of the most interesting and fulfilling challenges I have yet to face since coming to William and Mary.

A quick glance around the site during a hot June day and the average person would quickly feel relieved that they don't have to meticulously dig through thin layers of dirt all day. However, if one looks a little closer they will see about a dozen undergraduate students, a few graduate students, teaching assistants, and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation staff members working to uncover information about the way our ancestors lived. Finding a small fragment of an artifact could lead to a better understanding of what happened before our time.

One of the interesting things I found out about the site is that there was an African-American community that lived here in the early 1900s, prior to the Rockefeller Foundation's purchase of the land as part of Colonial Williamsburg. These people were not well documented and this dig could really tell us a lot about the way they lived and some of the things that they used and did in everyday life. Although we are in our last week and have yet to find many clues about these people, I am hopeful but confident that by the end of the second summer session more will be explained.

Coming into this I definitely didn't exactly know what I was getting into. And when I found out all that was required on an excavation I was a bit hesitant and maybe a bit regretful. After a week or so I realized that this is a very good way to learn and absorb information as we are thrown into the action of digging up and identifying artifacts. It was at the end of the fourth week that I could really appreciate everything that this experience has offered when an older woman and her husband said that they had always dreamed of going on an archaeological dig, but their responsibilities had made that impossible and they now felt that it was too late for them to have the opportunity. This helped me to understand that although digging in the sun may not always be the most fun thing, we are a part of something that is really interesting and useful to many people.

Excavating Features - What Dirt Can Tell Us

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:25:00-0400

Posted by
John Kelly

John Page.

Over the past few days, I have been involved with the excavation of a seventeenth-century boundary ditch that runs through the Ravenscroft Site near the southeast corner of Structure A. Before Virginia's colonial capital was moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg in 1699, the site where today's Historic Area sits was known as Middle Plantation. Much of Middle Plantation was owned by John Page, a wealthy Englishman who journeyed to Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century. Middle Plantation was characterized by English-style brick buildings, including Page's cruciform-shaped house (which has been previously excavated by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation). Since the vast majority of Virginians at this time lived in small, wooden dwellings, these brick buildings were regarded as some of the most impressive structures in the colony. Most of these structures were demolished to make way for the carefully gridded streets of Williamsburg. The boundary ditch we are excavating would have marked property lines in Middle Plantation prior to the founding of Williamsburg.

Unlike digging through plowzone, for which we used mostly shovels, the excavation of features is a more detailed process. First, before any of the feature is excavated, it is carefully cleaned for an opening photo.

Teaching Assistant Stephanie Bergman prepares a photo board to label a feature photo with the date, her location within the site, and the stage of excavation, and selects a north arrow and metric scale to place within the photo.

The seventeenth-century boundary ditch as seen in profile after John bisected it (divided it in two so that he could see its shape when viewed vertically).

Next, we draw a map of the feature on a coordinate plane, allowing future archaeologists to follow our work and know our exact location. Since the boundary ditch extended through multiple units, our map was large enough for two pages. Next, we divide the feature in two, and excavate one half (trowels only!), allowing us to see the feature in profile, which we map as well.

All features are carefully mapped to scale prior to excavation.

Next, the remainder of the feature is excavated, and all artifacts are carefully bagged and labeled. We only found three small pieces of glass in the entire boundary ditch--almost nothing. This is to be expected, as the ditch predates everything else on our site, making the chances of artifacts falling into it very slim. As we were nearing the end of the boundary ditch, we discovered that it was interrupted by a more recent posthole. Unlike the boundary ditch, we can see various artifacts protruding from the posthole. This discovery emphasizes the importance archaeologists place on stratigraphy and how it is useful for interpreting a site through time. Since the posthole is a separate feature, we will begin the process over again; cleaning, photographing, mapping, bisecting, excavating and photographing again. As we are about to begin our excavation of the posthole, I hope it will lead to a greater understanding of how the Ravenscroft Site was used in the past.

The darker soil of a feature (in this case, one of James Knight's 1954 trenches to find colonial foundations) is removed during excavation, leaving the surrounding pale yellow subsoil. We can now see the shape and depth of the feature, allowing us to make inferences about how it was created and what purpose it served.

More From Our Students

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:09:00-0400

Posted by
Lindsay Carver

Students working in the new northern section of our site, in several features beneath the plowzone.

While working at Ravenscroft over the past four weeks, the uniqueness of the site as part of Colonial Williamsburg, the world’s largest outdoor living history museum, has become apparent. A few weeks ago, we came across our first feature, soil stains that were left from the 1998 tenant house exhibit. Since the area served as an agricultural exhibit during the 1960s-1990s, prior to the development of the tenant house, we then had to dig through about 18 inches of soil that was disturbed vertically by a plow. Now that we have removed that layer of plowzone, older features from the actual colonial period are becoming apparent. We have finished up the excavation of scars left by the plow, and are now removing the soil in the trenches that remain from the 1954 excavation. When those more modern features have been removed, we can finally excavate the remnants of what we believe might be the eighteenth-century fence line between colonial lots 267 and 268.

Animal teeth like these pig’s molars are common finds at the Ravenscroft site.

Some days it seems that there are competitions between students to find the “best” artifact. Although all artifacts are equally valuable in the interpretation of a site, I have to admit that some artifacts that I have found stick out in my mind more than others. When I was younger, I wanted to be a dentist, so I love to find animal teeth (not to mention the fact that they are easier to identify than other animal bones!). Oddly enough, some of the more interesting artifacts to me have been from the twentieth century. For example, one exciting find for me was a game die that was manufactured in Japan, probably during the 1950s. Just the other day, I found a bent spoon that was from the nineteenth or twentieth century. Just as archaeologists have theories as to the function of the cellar, I like to imagine how the artifacts were used in the past. I have a theory that the die came from the pool hall we know was nearby during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hopefully, the artifacts that we find before Ravenscroft closes at the end of the summer will help us answer the questions that we still have about the uses of the site over the centuries and its occupants.

Posted by
Stephanie Done

Stephanie trowels with Matt to “clean” the site for a photograph.

After only four weeks of working on the Ravenscroft site I almost feel like a real archaeologist. Of course I realize that a masters degree or beyond is required to become one, but the amount of knowledge, skills and experience I’ve acquired during the past four weeks is priceless. The public’s genuine interest in what we are doing is especially rewarding and I really enjoy answering their questions about the site and our methods. The work is strenuous at times and the weather can be unforgiving and sometimes I ask myself, “Why are we doing this? How can researching the appearance, function and inhabitants of Structure A contribute to the history of Colonial Williamsburg?” These questions are immediately answered when I think about some of the goals of historical archaeology: to learn about the history of literate people not included in historical documents alone and speak for the disenfranchised. It can also supplement what we know through historical documents. For example, there is a reference to this property as the “old bake house lot” in a historical document and the archaeological data we find during our research here at Ravenscroft can help confirm this reference. With only one week left for my field school here at Ravenscroft, I hope that we come closer to discovering more about Structure A and that the public continues their interest, support and appreciation of historical archaeology.

Posted by
CJ Muse

CJ and Ari (an intern with the Colonial Williamsburg Department of Archaeological Research) describe the feature they are excavating on one of the many forms we use to record everything we dig.

My time here on the Ravenscroft site has been a rollercoaster ride—gaining archaeological knowledge and skills by being thrown into the deep end of archaeological research. The most exciting aspect of archaeology for me is the thrill of knowing that I have found a piece of history that has been hidden away from the world for hundreds years. As we move forward with the field school, we have now removed the final layer of plowzone, and uncovered the sterile subsoil (soil that is free of artifacts and was deposited prior to any human use of the landscape). The subsoil contains many features and artifacts. It is really cool how pronounced a feature can be against orange-yellow sub soil as we clean away remaining plowzone. I am looking forward to excavating the features to see what artifacts lay within them to help piece together the puzzle of Structure A at the Ravenscroft site. Another exciting aspect of the field school so far has been the level of interaction between us and our public audience. It has been very rewarding to me to educate the many young minds that wander into our site on a daily basis, teaching them about our site, as well as how archaeology can fill in the gaps which are left from written histories and I anticipate nothing less than an adventurous final two weeks of the session.

More Student Perspectives on Archaeological Fieldwork

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:05:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

Our student archaeologists are quickly developing their professional field skills, and are becoming more familiar and more comfortable with our excavation methods. They can now accurately identify some of the most common artifacts that we find on the site, and they can construct an accurate timeline of what happened when, using the layers they dig in the soil and the features they see on the site to guide them. In this blog post, you will hear from a few more of them as they reflect on their field school experiences of the past three weeks.

Posted by
Matt Eversole

After a summer of trail maintenance, I thought that I knew a lot about digging, but archaeology is a whole different world. When I was told that I would be using a trowel to dig, I almost laughed, because I’m used to using shovels and picks to dig very quickly. I guess if I had thought about it, I would have realized that the work crew approach of digging holes as fast as possible couldn’t apply to archaeology, but whenever I thought of digging, I thought only of what I knew. We are now halfway through a five-week class and have only dug about a foot down, which is much slower than the digging I did on the trail. Another thing that I wasn’t expecting was the amount of paperwork—a sheet is filled out for every unit and every layer. This paperwork is used to describe all the conditions for each layer we excavate.

I guess the concept of organized destruction had never really occurred to me, and that is one way to describe archaeology. Another thing that I find interesting is just how much archaeologists are able to learn from what they dig up. I never would have thought that a pile of trash would be a good source of information, but there is a lot to learn from what previous generations throw away. You can learn about things like what previous generations did and didn’t like. I didn’t really realize that you can get this type of information from almost everything that you find.

Posted by
Andrew Christensen

As I sit down to write this halfway through this year’s first field school session, I look back not only on the work that we’ve done and the things that we have learned, but also at the interaction between the field school and the public. When I would visit an archaeological investigation as a student not yet in college, I would stand behind the rope and wonder at what sort of crazy person would crouch, kneel (and never sit) in the hot sun all day, screening soil and meticulously skimming each layer with trowels. I guess that kind of person was me!

One of the questions that I have heard asked most during my stay at the Ravenscroft field school is: “Why are you digging this place again?” Visitors look at the 1950s excavation photographs and wonder what sorts of questions still require answering, especially given the amount of work we are putting into it. Historical archaeology is still a comparatively new discipline, and many of the methods that we are employing did not exist fifty years ago. It is exciting to look at the site as one would look at a work of art, and see, through a better understanding of colonial life and archaeological principles, something whose value was unnoticed or whose importance was previously discounted. When I first learned that the site was previously excavated, I thought that we wouldn’t have much else to find. After helping to excavate thousands of artifacts and searching for evidence of forgotten structures that could very well have been missed, I am just beginning to understand that we have a great many things to learn about the men and women who lived and worked here.

Even with this in mind, I asked a graduate student an odd question today, while she was studying a section of Structure A’s builder’s trench that can be traced to the exact time of the outbuilding’s construction. I asked her why we were not excavating the entire trench, all around the site. Her answer was that in the future, as new methods are discovered, people will need to have parts of the trench to excavate. With different research questions in mind and new methods, future researchers will be able to study the site in ways we never would be able to do today, and to notice certain trends that we might miss. Despite it being a somewhat naive question, its answer is part of the core of what we are doing here. Saving a piece of history for future researchers should always be one focus of our discipline, and respecting the research of those that come after us as well as those who came before us is an integral part of our conservation ethic. The fact that our understanding of this site is, and will be, continually deepening is an exciting one indeed. (And hopefully it will be a little less hot for the people who come after us!)

Posted by
Jamie Barnes

As a student of archaeology, I came into the field school with my own perceptions of how an archaeological dig would progress. Having only learned methods in a classroom, the chance to actually participate in a real dig is an exciting opportunity. It’s very interesting to learn how archaeologists approach a site, particularly one in an urban area like Colonial Williamsburg where there are hundreds of years of history in one site. My only previous work was a day of shovel test pits, where we dug holes along a grid line in search of any presence of human activity. We didn’t pay as much attention to stratigraphy, excavate as carefully, or do nearly as much paperwork!

As we finish our third week of excavations I’ve come to realize that methods vary between sites. Archeologists may have different research questions and may have differential access to written resources. A lot of the archaeology I’ve learned about so far has involved prehistoric archaeology, namely that involving Native Americans before the colonization of the Americas. In prehistoric archaeology, there is a dearth of documentary resources, but historical archaeology in Colonial Williamsburg is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to written resources. At the Ravenscroft site we have numerous records (such as newspaper advertisements and probate records), maps, and photographs. For many tourists their first question is “How did you know the site was here?” at which point I show them our 1781 map showing Structure A and B.

I’ve often heard criticisms of historical archaeology asking why we need to spend the money to excavate material that we already know about through historical records. I personally think it it’s an excellent way to learn even more about people who lived in and around the Ravenscroft site. Through archaeology, we are able to learn about the majority of Williamsburg, who were underrepresented in the archaeological record, and to learn more about their diet and other aspects of daily life that are often not written down. I know I don’t write everything I eat down on paper! We can even learn about how people utilized the space around them, such as where they threw their trash or where they placed outbuildings. I hope that the rest of my time here will help to answer the various research questions posed by archaeologists and help create a better understanding of the history of Ravenscroft.

A Field Update On Our Progress So Far This Year

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:03:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

At the close of our third week of this field season’s excavations, we are making good progress. With the help of Teaching Assistants Jenny Camp and Stephanie Bergman, and several of our interns, our students are stripping the last of four layers of twentieth-century soil from our new excavation area north of Structure A, revealing the top of a layer of pale yellow subsoil (soil that predates any human activity on the site, recognizable by its color and high clay content, along with its absence of artifacts). Interrupting this layer, we can already see many features—patches of differently colored soil loaded with artifacts. These features will tell us how people were using this property at different periods in its history.

Any ground-disturbing action made between the 1660s, when John Page first claimed ownership of this land, and the 1960s, when it was first plowed, will now show up as a stain in the soil if it penetrated deeply enough. So far, we are not observing any features related to Ravenscroft’s residential use prior to the property’s acquisition by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Instead, we are seeing the scars in the soil created when this was a plowed field in the twentieth century, as well as James Knight’s trenches from a 1954 exploratory excavation of this site. However, there are only a handful of one-meter squares with exposed subsoil so far. When we have stripped our entire three-by-nine-meter area of its overlying modern layers, a fuller picture of this area of the site will emerge, hopefully including some features dating to earlier periods. At that point we will photograph and map the patterns in the soil and consider each feature and its artifacts in relation to other features on the site and the buildings we know of so far.

CJ and Ari trowel their unit at the top of the newly revealed subsoil.

Sarah Chesney excavates the eastern portion of the cellar’s builder’s trench, placing her artifacts in a bag labeled with information that tells us exactly where she found them.

Further south, Sarah Chesney and I, along with a few rotating students and interns, are excavating some of the eighteenth-century features left in the main excavation area opened in the summer of 2006. We have nearly completed the excavation of the eastern side of the cellar’s builder’s trench (for an explanation of this feature, see our July 2006 post), whose artifacts were deposited at the time Structure A was erected. So far, none of the artifacts we are retrieving from this feature (such as animal bone, pieces of ceramic dishes or food storage vessels, nails, and brick fragments) has caused us to revise our understanding of Structure A’s likely construction date. Based on a fragment of pottery first produced in Yorktown in 1720, and other ceramic artifacts that predate the builders’ backfill (such as white salt-glazed stoneware imported from England, also manufactured beginning in 1720), we know that the building could not have been constructed any earlier than that date. We could still find a more recent artifact that would be evidence of a later construction date and we are watching artifacts carefully in case that occurs.

Four wine bottle bases recovered recently from the Ravenscroft Site. Their straight sides (though fragmentary) indicate that they probably date to sometime after 1730.

Archaeologists can estimate the manufacture dates of the bottles and bottle fragments they recover by comparing the shape of a wine bottle to a bottle typology like the one above that shows how these containers changed over time.

We also continue to find many pieces of early eighteenth-century wine bottles in the builder’s trench. These bottle fragments are consistent with other deposits of trash on the site that were discarded prior to the construction of Structure A, so they likely reflect the redeposition of trash that was already present on site, rather than any activities that were ongoing during the construction of the Structure A. In archaeology, it is often impossible to dig a single time period, or to excavate materials related to a single household or building. We excavate the entire history of land use at the Ravenscroft site over a period of roughly three centuries, and we are as interested in this apparent earlier eighteenth-century (or even late seventeenth-century) occupation of the property as we are in period during which Structures A and B were in use.

Two wine bottle necks and the base of a third bottle (near Meredith Poole’s trowel) are visible hanging from the vertical section through this posthole and postmold.

Similar wine bottle fragments also turned up in abundance in a posthole and postmold I have been excavating this week. This was a large square hole dug in the eighteenth century to set in a wooden post supporting a fence or a wooden building of some sort. When the hole was filled in around the erected post, the soil used to fill it looked slightly different than the undisturbed soil layers, and was filled with trash that we recover as artifacts. The post itself left a separate impression in the ground when it was removed after the fence or building’s demolition, and the resulting hole was filled in, leaving a visible postmold. In this particular case, a large square post was propped up by several bricks, like two other posthole/postmolds on the site that were excavated in 1998. Given its size, and the evident efforts to stabilize the post, it is more likely that it provided support for a building, rather than simply a fenceline bordering the property. Based on ceramic artifacts recovered from these features, I can tell that the post was put up around 1730 or so (at the very earliest). The building it supported probably did not remain standing for a very long period of time, given that the dates of the artifacts from the posthole (created when the post was put in) and the postmold (created when the post was removed) are not substantially different. Unfortunately, we have not yet found any similar postholes in line with this one that would help us to outline the rest of the building, but we will certainly be on the lookout for them now!

CWF Department of Archaeological Research Staff Archaeologist Andrew Edwards excavates a new test unit.

Even further south, at the edge of Nicholson Street, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Staff Archaeologist Andrew Edwards is conducting a search for the edge of the twentieth-century plowed field on the Ravenscroft site. We have followed the circa 1920 sewer trench toward the street, placing two 1-meter square excavation units directly over the sewer trench where the ground begins to dip toward the street and where we think the plowed field might have ended. In excavating these units, Andy is attempting to find a small portion of the site that remains undisturbed by the churning actions of the plow, allowing us to see the original colonial layers of soil that are no longer distinct throughout the rest of the site. By excavating the sewer trench in these units, he hopes to get a sneak preview of the (hopefully undisturbed) stratigraphy in this area by viewing the layers of soil that will be visible in the walls of the excavated trench. This will also help him to answer some other questions he has about Structure A and the Ravenscroft property in general, such as:

Why is the building so far removed from the street and set so high above the roadway (especially since the cellar’s wide street-facing entrance seems to suggest storage goods were carted in from Nicholson Street)?
Has the topography (height and contour of the ground surface) changed between the eighteenth century and the present day?
Was there a separate road, path, or driveway that led from Nicholson Street to Structure A’s cellar entrance?
Is there any remaining eighteenth-century ground surface preserved closer to the street?

The Nitty-Gritty of Archaeology - Myth vs. Reality

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:10:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

For the majority of this year’s weblog posts, we aim to give our readers an inside look at the experience of participating in an excavation by regularly including a variety of perspectives from students, many of whom are on their first archaeological dig, as well as from interns, who are gaining experience and pursuing specific research of their own. We hope that their experiences will answer some of your questions about our methods and help to illustrate what it is actually like to use shovels, trowels, spoons, and even dental picks to dig dirt in the hot sun all day in the continuing quest for the history of everyday life in Williamsburg! The contributions below come from Rachel Gorman, a student archaeologist in our archaeological field school, and from Brad Rohlf, who is completing an internship in public outreach with Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Research Division as part of his master’s degree program in public history at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Posted by
Rachel Gorman

Rachel screens for artifacts during one of her first weeks at the Ravenscroft site.

So we are nearing the end of the second week of field school, and I can hardly believe how much has changed since we first set foot on the Ravenscroft site. Not everything of course—the heat has certainly been consistent since we began to dig—but I am really starting to get a sense of how archaeologists piece together the history of a site, and it is a far cry from what I had imagined before beginning to excavate. This field school is my first experience working as an archaeologist, so I came into the project with a limited understanding of what we would be doing. I guess I thought most of our time would be spent dusting off full sets of skeletal remains, plucking artifacts out of the ground and maybe practicing our skills with a bullwhip or two! Little did I know that archaeologists are as interested in stains in the soil as they are in bones and artifacts, and that shoveling skills are far more useful on site than anything Indy might be able to do with a whip. Though I’ve enjoyed learning everything the field school has taught me—from how to use a shovel to dig horizontally, to how to interpret changes in soil color and texture, to the importance of sifting for small (and microscopic) material—learning about the impact that archaeological work has on historical knowledge has been by far the most inspiring lesson for me thus far. While I was speaking to members of the public today, I was struck by the fact that no matter what archaeologists are looking at—be it features within our site, the use-life of Structure A, or the lifestyles of its occupants or of those residents of the property who came after Structure A was no longer in use—they strive to understand beyond what is already written down in historical documents. Without the kind of work we are doing, the lives of those that were not wealthy, were illiterate, or were enslaved would be lost from the historical record, and our perception of the past would be forever skewed. Digging in the heat might not be pleasant, but it is absolutely necessary to tell a more balanced (and in my view, compelling) story about the history of our nation and more generally, the human experience.

Posted by
Brad Rohlf

Associate Curator of Zooarchaeology Steve Atkins sorts faunal remains (animal bone) from an archaeological site.

Being primarily a historian by training, I have had the opportunity to focus largely on public interpretation at the site while keeping tabs on the activity taking place in the ground. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work in archaeology previous to my experience here at Ravenscroft, so I arrived with an understanding of archaeological techniques. In providing interpretation and information to visitors, I have noticed several questions that are frequently asked at Ravenscroft. Possibly the most commonly asked question is, “What exactly are you looking for?” The answer to this question is by no means short, for we always welcome unforeseen surprises. Of course we are looking for artifacts, but unfortunately artifacts do not tell us much unless we find them within their original context. Context—a term that broadly covers where an artifact was discarded, what other artifacts it is found near or contemporary with, and the circumstances in which it was deposited (e.g., during the construction of a building)—is incredibly important in archaeology. Hence something we hope to find is an area of the site that hasn’t been disturbed too dramatically by plowing or some other human activity, so that we may find definitive evidence related to Structure A and its occupants. If this scenario is possible, we hope that the artifactual remains will help to shed light on the people involved in the Ravenscroft site in the past, especially lower class citizens and enslaved people. These artifacts provide us with information that was not often written or recorded. For example, animal bones provide valuable insight into the everyday diets of the occupants, which helps us determine their social standing and many other things. Traditional historians typically focus primarily on documentary research. However, as is often the case, documentary research has left many gaps in the full history of Ravenscroft. Thus we hope to find archaeological evidence, such as botanical remains of the grains that might have been used in baking (if Structure A was ever used as a bakery), to help fill in those gaps and deepen our understanding of Ravenscroft. Through such material remains, the mystery of Ravenscroft is gradually unfolding.

Posted by
Katie Sikes

Matt and John may take a few fashion cues from Indiana Jones when it comes to their headwear, but unlike in the movies, their artifacts and soil samples are clearly labeled with context information that demonstrates which layer of soil these items came from, and where within our site’s grid they were found.

As Rachel is discovering, popular perceptions of archaeology, based in part upon movies like those in the Indiana Jones series, may certainly capture the sense of fun and adventure, and the excitement of discovery that archaeologists can experience in researching people who lived in other times and places. In reality, however, the practice of archaeology, as thrilling as many of us find it, is much more disciplined and methodical than it is portrayed to be in most films. The way we are taught to use our tools is very particular, and we often concentrate on aspects of the site you might not anticipate (such as the dirt itself!). American archaeologists today very rarely dig human burials to excavate skeletal remains (usually when the site is scheduled to undergo development and excavation is therefore unavoidable, and increasingly only after consulting with the communities who claim ties of heritage to those graves). The bones we do excavate more commonly are the bones of animals who contributed meat to colonial tables, as Brad points out. We also collect artifacts, yesterday’s trash, which only very rarely turn up in the form of whole, precious objects like the fictional “Golden Idol of Fertility” of Indiana Jones fame. But the broken odds and ends we find are every bit as meaningful, even if perhaps they are not as pretty. We can learn a lot by poking through other people’s garbage! And, as Brad notes, it is not the objects themselves that we covet, but rather the stories that they can tell us when their placement within the site is carefully recorded. Keeping thorough records, photographs, and maps of what we find helps us connect certain groups of artifacts to certain time periods and to certain people and their activities. It does require us to think carefully and work more slowly than if we skipped these steps or dug quickly with the aid of machines. Still, without these necessarily slower methods, our hole in the ground might be as deep and we might even retrieve as many artifacts, but because of their lost contexts we would produce very little new information about the past—our ultimate goal.

A typical assemblage of artifacts from Ravenscroft’s plowzone (the soil disturbed when a field was plowed), including nails, pieces of glass, shells, and ceramic sherds—pieces of people’s dishes and food storage containers. All of these artifacts are in the initial stages of being processed. They are set to dry after being washed and sorted at the Archaeology Lab.

Expanding Excavations at Ravenscroft

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:46:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

Our student crew this summer session (left to right): Stephanie, Andrew, CJ, Jamie, James, Lindsey, Ryan, Mike, John, Matt, Rachel.

Our staff this summer session (left to right): Teaching Assistants Stephanie Bergman, Jenny Camp, Katie Sikes, and Sarah Chesney.

The Ravenscroft site has now reopened for the summer 2008 field season. Once again, we welcomed a new crew of student archaeologists for our first week of excavations in a field school run jointly by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's Department of Archaeological Research and the College of William & Mary.

This year we are expanding our excavations into the "backyard" of colonial lot 267 to increase our chances of uncovering features related to fencelines, to additional (wooden) outbuildings that likely once stood on this site, or to landscape features such as tree plantings. We will also be considering how the artifacts in this area of the site differ from those closer to Structure A's brick foundations, helping us to define various activity areas on site. Already we are noting fewer ceramic artifacts (such as pieces of dishes), as we would expect as we excavate further from the center of domestic activities on the property. We are also finding less window glass, suggesting that any outbuildings that may have stood in this area did not have glazed windows.

The students are currently working within a new 3 x 9 meter area north of our 2006-2007 excavations, digging through a thick layer of soil that was plowed in the 20th century, and finding artifacts that span the 17th through 20th centuries. Once this plowzone layer is stripped from the site, we will begin to examine the stains in the soil beneath it for features related to the use of the Ravenscroft property, as we did last year further south.

We are also preparing the 2006-2007 excavation area for our continued feature excavations within and surrounding structure A's cellar.

The site is now open to the public, with daily children's activities taking place each morning between 10:00 and 11:30. We invite you to join us!

The 2007 Field Season Draws to a Close

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:48:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

We said a reluctant goodbye to our student crew on August 3rd, after taking several overhead site photographs of the excavated cellar from the basket of a cherry picker. Intact features on the cellar floor and the artifacts that they contain await continued excavations in the 2008 field season. The Ravenscroft Site will continue to be interpreted for the public through the end of the month, though ongoing excavations are now limited with our smaller crew.

The past few week's excavations have been focused on removing several features (soil stains) associated with past land use, including this posthole (above), one of a line of 3 postholes extending to the north in line with the cellar. Even though these features appeared on only one side of the cellar (the western side), we had hoped that these features might have been left from posts associated with a northern (wooden) room of Structure A. Excavation has proven, however, that though they most likely date from the 18th century, they are too deep to have been plowed away on the eastern side of the site, and therefore are probably not linked to Structure A.

We have also been removing more layers from the midden (trash deposits piled against the cellar wall, above left) to the east of the cellar, as well as part of the cellar's builder's trench (see our July 2006 post for an explanation of this feature), which will help us to refine our understanding of the earliest possible date of construction for the building. Both the midden layers and the builder's trench have yielded architectural materials that we believe to be associated with a an even earlier building that once stood on the site before Structure A. Among these materials are window leads consistent with 17th-century or early 18th-century casement windows and very poorly fired brick, also typical of 17th-century deposits. In addition to architectural artifacts, the midden layers are also full of artifacts like pieces of 18th-century glass wine bottles, pieces of delftware dishes, and this pipe bowl with a maker's mark consisting of a crown above the harp of Ireland (above right). Once back in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Department of Archaeological Research lab, this artifact, like all others, will be cleaned, researched for its date and region of manufacture, and entered into the Ravenscroft Site's artifact catalog.

Kids, Then and Now

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:11:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

Some of the most insightful questions and the most keen-eyed observations about our ongoing excavations come from children, frequent visitors to our site. Fascinated by the sight of digging and sifting through dirt in order to tell new stories about the past, they wonder, among many other things, what our archaeological site can say about children's lives in the 18th century. This is an important question to an historical archaeologist, as one of our tasks is to provide historical information on groups of people who are not well-represented in primary documents. While the children of 18th-century Williamsburg were rarely the focus of Virginia Gazette articles, or the authors of wills or diaries, they did leave behind their prized belongings and their unwanted refuse, just as adults did, and these objects turn up as 21st-century artifacts for archaeologists and visitors alike to puzzle over.

Among the toys that the Ravenscroft site has produced over the past two years' excavations are an unusually high number of marbles. Many of these, like the one above, were fashioned from clay, potentially dating to the 18th century. Others were mass-produced from molded glass, typical of the early 20th century. While we can't be sure exactly how these marbles were used or by whom, one can certainly imagine the children of 18th-century households at the Ravenscroft site playing outside and losing these small toys, during games that may have continued to be played on the property from generation to generation as the 19th and 20th centuries progressed.

This porcelain doll's arm (above left) is another fragment of a toy left behind at the Ravenscroft site. Twenty-first-century kids had the opportunity to draw this and other artifacts retrieved at Ravenscroft recently at one of our on-site children's activities, organized and presented by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Staff Archaeologist Meredith Poole (to view some of these drawings see our Public Archaeology page under Current Excavation).

Other hands-on activities have included using casts of actual glass wine bottle seals found at the Ravenscroft site (above left) to mold plasticine replicas (above right) of these artifacts. Interacting with the objects of the past is one way of engaging children in an educational discussion of how we know what we know about our colonial history and how we formulate research questions to generate further information about the past.

A Change of Crew and a Change of Scene

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:10:00-0400

Posted by
Katie Sikes

With the help of the new students of our field school's second session (below), as well as returning veteran students and interns Libby, Zach, Cheryl, Matt, and Tyler, we are now working in the protective shade of a very large and sturdy tent, purchased with generous donations to the Department of Archaeological Research. While our crew is certainly very grateful for the improved working conditions, the exhibit tent's greatest benefit is to the site itself, which is now better sheltered from the erosive effects of rain, and the baking sun which dries and cracks the ground. All of this makes our job of recognizing, mapping, and photographing the differences in soil color and texture much easier.

From left to right: Sarah, Danny, Chase, Brian, and Angela join our excavation.

Left: A pig's jaw, complete with teeth. Right: a pipe bowl complete with a maker's mark identifying its manufacturer.

We have completed our excavation of the cellar's fill, which contained thousands of artifacts now being curated at Colonial Williamsburg Foundatation's Department of Archaeological Research Laboratory. Among these finds, animal bones left from long ago meals were some of the most frequently found items, along with fragments of dishes and wine bottles.

Thimbles and straight pins used for sewing and embroidery, and fragments of clay pipes (such as this pipe bowl pictured above right) were among the less frequently encountered items. Two spanish coins minted in Mexico City were also found within the cellar. Mexican currency was commonly circulated in Virginia as the only reliable source of silver, since it was illegal at the time to export scarce British silver from England. Artifacts such as these can be seen being cleaned on site every Tuesday and Thursday morning (left, photo by Barbara Lombardi).

Artifacts in archaeology, however, are only as important as where you find them, so we are happiest to report that some the artifacts within the cellar are embedded into its earthen floor, which contains intact features (soil stains left by people's past activities) undisturbed by the 1954 excavation. These artifacts found in their original context, once their positions are carefully plotted, have the best chance of contributing to our understanding of Structure A's function, use-life, or abandonment.

In addition to carefully mapping the remaining artifacts and features on the floor of the cellar, we are now in the process of drafting brick-by-brick drawings of the cellars interior walls, documenting even the minor details of the cellar's masonry.