One of the great things about working at a local historical society is that there is always something new going on. For the last two weeks, the Dutch House, one of the museums that the New Castle Historical Society operates, was the home of an archaeological dig. While the Dutch House has two garden areas, one is about to be turned into a Delaware native plant garden. The planting of trees and shrubs will potentially disturb any existing archaeological sites as their roots penetrate the landscape. For this reason, now seemed as good a time as any to begin this type of project.
The Dutch House (back view)
While NCHS has conducted some archaeological research at the Amstel House where their offices are located, this was the first time any digging occurred at the Dutch House. For the past two weeks a team of archaeologists from John Milner Associates, Inc were on site aided by a number of volunteers from the community. I was lucky enough to take a break from my tour writing to volunteer one day. And what a blast is was!
Ground Penetrating Radar (commonly referred to as GPR), historical surveys, and maps were used to give the archaeologists some idea of where there may be anomalies beneath the surface and where earlier structures existed. Most of the excavations entailed creating 2.5' by 2.5' test pits, or units, that were excavated layer by layer. In each layer the dirt was sifted and we put any objects we found into plastic bags with a specific description of which unit and at what layer it was found. Without this information the objects have no context, and would therefore be near useless. Among the activities I got to participate in included sifting dirt, picking out objects, cleaning the objects, and then re-bagging them to be taken back to the lab to be processed later.
The Dig Site
Many of the excavation sites turned out to be at least 3 feet deep if not more, much deeper than the archaeologists were expecting, and in one unit it was more that 5 feet before the eighteenth century surface was reached. These excavations suggest that the New Castle landscape, which is today rather level, was most likely much more varied in elevation.
Amy, one of the Archaeologist working on one of the units.
In terms of objects, I was amazed by the variation and amount of material found in just 10 test pits, a small fraction of the garden's total size. Many of the objects included pottery shards, including a piece of Borderware, which may date to the seventeenth century; glass pieces; nails and other metal ware, clay marbles, buttons, and a thimble. In what is believed to be a trash pit, a near in-tact mineral water bottle from Wilmington was unearthed. This trash pit also produced a number of larger pieces of pottery.
Jen, another archaeologist working on the trash pit, which you can see was expanded past the 2.5' by 2.5' size typically excavated
Excavating the mineral water bottle in the trash pit.
It was an interesting diversion, but my tour is also well on its way as my internship moves into its final weeks. The script is almost finished and I will soon begin recording a test version of the tour. This version will be used on a test group to find out what people like and dislike about the tour, as well as a time for final fact-checking with a group familiar with New Castle's history. While I am rather nervous about being the voice behind the audio tour for this test version, the plan is for the final recording to have a cast of characters to narrate the different histories, stories, and primary source excerpts. So stay tuned!!
** All these photographs were taken by me!
Now that the archaeologists have identified some resources on the site, what will happen next? Will the garden be postponed to permit a more thorough investigation of the privy area?
ReplyDeleteHi Kasey,
ReplyDeleteWhile there is still some last minute work going on in the dig, the next step is for the artifacts found to be cleaned and processed. Artifacts, drawings, photographs, and historic context will all be used in the archaeologists' final report. While the Garden Club, who will be putting in the garden, already have their design, the archaeologists in their report will recommend for instance where trees should be avoided. For example where the trash pit was discovered is where a tree was supposed to be planted, so that will probably change. Based on the archaeologists' recommendations things will change so as to protect the resources, and in hopes of future excavations should more funds become available. Hope that makes sense!