Today we finally were down to the cultural layers of interest and started recovering the amount of artifacts we were expecting. Because it is starting to get complicated on site as we work out the order that we should remove contexts, we are trying an experiment where one student in each excavation group is appointed as the team lead for the day. That means they are in charge of keeping track of progress and implementing the excavation strategy, keeping on top of paperwork, and reporting to either me or James if we stop by for an update.
The west wall group worked on taking down the exterior wall deposit further, practiced a little plan drawing, and began finding some glass and ceramics, metal, buttons, charcoal, coal, and nails mixed in to the fill.
The north wall crew continued carefully excavating through several overlapping contexts that fall on the outside of the north wall of the structure. While a lot of it was construction/destruction related debris, they did recover some buttons, ceramic, part of a leather boot, and what looks like a brass lamp base.
We’d been scratching our heads a little why we hadn’t found the same amount of artifacts in excavation areas that are really close to productive units from our last excavations. Today in the midden unit, they placed three exploratory sondages and quickly determined that yes, there is a midden deposit there under some sterile-looking fill. Our usual paper bag recovery system was quickly overwhelmed and we went back to the bin method of artifact collection that we commonly used in 2017 and 2018. Hooray!
A big part of the excavation is making sure we not only know where artifacts came from, but also ensure that that context doesn’t get lost. Each bag/bin gets a number which is associated in the site binder with the context information, date, site, and personnel. That allows us to cross check later during the analysis in case of errors in transcription or attribution.
Looking through some of the artifacts recovered today was like meeting some old friends after a long absence. I recognized some fragments of dishes that we also saw in our 2017 and 2018 midden excavations. Some standout pieces in particular were some flow blue plate fragments, parts of an alphabet border nursery plate, another bone toothbrush, and another J. & M.P. Bell & Co. Blue Willow plate. We also had some new never-before-seen items as well. If we get rained out later this week, it will be fun to do some lab work to get these finds clean so we can begin the analysis.
I think the artifact of the day would have to be this doll’s teacup recovered from the midden. The bowl of the cup was recovered first, and an hour or two later the fragment with the handle popped up. To our delight they refit perfectly! I suspect this is part of the same doll’s set that we recovered some pieces (a lid to a tiny tureen, and another cup) from 2018. It is great to have further evidence (nurseryware, marbles, toy tea sets) that there were children living and playing here.
The summer kitchen exploration continued. There was a little breakthrough in the morning when they were able to locate the stump of a tree which was cut down after we finished excavating in 2018. As this stump was at the original ground surface, this gave us a good indication that we were soon to encounter the cultural layers of interest! This unit has been a bit of a slow burn so far, but I think it will become pretty interesting pretty quickly. One notable find was an old key, complete from bow-barrel-to-bit, which they joked was from the summer kitchen door (or maybe the back door of the house as that was close by too).
Last but not least, we decided to put another unit in where we think the main midden distribution falls. Xander and Emma worked really hard today getting the sod and upper levelling fill contexts off of their unit, and hopefully they will soon be down into the midden layers.
We were visited today by Dr Michael Eamon, Principal of Traill College. He was last here in May 2018, so it was fun to catch him up with our interpretations from those excavations of Structure 1.
2 thoughts on “Getting down to business, finally, and Artifact of the Day — Doll Teacup”
I understand finding material cultures like ceramics and neoclassic poetry is important. But what about bones in the kitchen area such as mandibles belonging to sheep, can you tell me about the diet these kids eat?
Bradley Navaranjan
Bones can tell us a lot about the diet of the people who lived in this house. One thing to look for is the kinds of animals that they were eating, was it mostly beef, poultry, sheep, or pig? Sometimes we find fish or evidence of hunting wild game. The next level is to see the parts of the animal represented. Were these butchered professionally, and correspond to choice cuts, or are they more large joints and roasts, or things like the heads and feet? We can look at cut marks and saw marks as well to get a sense of how they were processed.
Kate Dougherty