We arrived on site this morning, unpacked the trailer and divided into respective task groups. Now that people are used to what we are doing, we can really crack on with the various survey and excavation activities underway.
All the survey groups have collected their elevation, point, and unit data, and now can work on integrating those numbers into a map of the artifact scatter. The big goal for today was to try and find the rubble structure that might represent the house. Since we had previously excavated part of it, we knew that it had been covered with a tarp, the question was where did it fall in our operation area. Based on some photos from 2023, James and I decided we were a little too far north, so we added a 2m x 4m block to the bottom of the unit and everyone set to work. We quickly discovered in the wall profiles that an extra 15-20cm of fill has been deposited over the 2023 ground surface, which means more digging for us to get down to the depth of the cultural material.
I am extremely proud of the Raccoons, they moved an enormous amount of dirt today, and it was hard digging. After lunch I heard the shout “Blue Tarp!”; as thrilling as “Thar she blows!” to a whaler.
The Earthworms were no slouches either. Part of the purpose of their unit was to determine if the midden-type deposits we found in the general area extended north towards the road/fence, or were concentrated further south. Based on their hard work today, we know that the midden does not extend to the north.
We also had a crew working on re-exposing the well and removing some of the rubble that fills it. Now that is cleared away, we can have students practice planning and profiling masonry structures.
We had hoped to get the full extent of the tarp uncovered by the end of the day, but the steady drizzle turned into a downpour, so we hurriedly packed up site and finished for the day a bit early! Tomorrow looks like it will be a nice day, so it will be a great way to round off the first week.
I was too busy running around to get pictures of everyone, and then the rain put a damper on the rest of the afternoon (ha!) but here are some snaps from the day:
Jacob and Megan are finishing their sondage unit at the left, while Thomas, Sam, Emma, and Nicolas work on taking down the upper level of the OA2 extension. Behind them, Syd and Kyra are finishing up their sondage unit.Thomas, Emma and Sam dig in the trench, assisted by bucketers Syd and Nicolas.Syd’s blue shoes set off the elusive blue tarp finally peeking through! Jacob is behind working on making sure the walls are nice and vertical.The mulch pile continues to be a favoured habitat for the archaeologists at rest! Please marvel at the giant earthworks in the background that the Earthworms and the Raccoons have created today!
It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is the last day of the first week of field school, time has truly been flying by. The weather is looking changeable, so we will decide in the morning if we will head out into the field or pivot to some classroom activities.
A brief but very intense storm rushed through at the end of the day yesterday, and the high winds mangled our sun canopy tents. The first order of business while we unloaded the trailer was to try and duct tape and bend the metal frames back so they could be somewhat useful still. Because of the heavy rain, site was extremely muddy this morning, we all got an extra workout from the inches of mud sticking to the bottom of our boots. The Raccoons and the Earthworms worked on excavating, while the Rats worked on finishing up their survey exercises.
It was a really pleasant day, and the excavation crews moved a lot of earth! We were able to determine via strategic sondage units that because of some fill brought in at some point, the current ground surface is a good 15cm or so higher than when we left the site in 2023. So this means we can shovel through the overburden a little more expediently and hopefully get down to the cultural layers that interest us more quickly. We relocated an old feature from our previous excavation which is helping us to home in on the rubble pile. We will be moving the operation area a bit more south to capture it and maybe finally satisfying our questions! The midden area is still a bit of a mystery, but by taking it down a little deeper we should have a better idea what is going on there tomorrow.
Here are some photos from the day:
Some Rats collecting data for their survey exercise.
The Earthworms at the start of the day dealing with mucky mud in the midden investigation area.
By the afternoon, the Earthworms had moved a lot of dirt working on their sondage units.
Yesterday and today an arborist truck has been dumping wood chips to the site that will be used by a researcher at the Trent Research Farm. The students have decided this pile is a perfect place to bask in the sun on breaks!
More Rat Crew surveying and recording data points using a Totalstation.
Part of the survey exercise also involves taking elevation data so they can construct a contour map of the terrain around their simulated site scatters.
The Raccoons also dealing with mud first thing in the morning in their operation area.
But by the afternoon, the Raccoons had successfully mostly completed their sondage units.
Our artifact of the day came from what we think is nearby to a midden area of the site. It’s a clay pipe bowl, with the initials TD impressed into the clay while it was still wet before firing. We’ve covered clay pipes before, but let’s explore TD pipes in a little more detail.
While smoking is a cultural practice that is on the decline now that we know about its various negative health effects, men, women, and children all enjoyed the soothing properties and sweet taste of tobacco by smoking it in mass-produced white clay pipes. Fancy pipes would have been made one at a time, carved by craftsmen out of meerschaum or brier wood, but clay pipes allowed mass manufacture and distribution of cheap and cheerful pipes that would be purchased one or two at a time and discarded after a couple uses.
The mysteries surrounding the initials “TD” on pipes have been of interest to many people over the years, and one of the first published articles attempting to address the mystery was written by Alfred Hopkins in the November 1937 printing of Antiques magazine. Hopkins ambitiously tried to ascribe the TD to the first words of the c. AD 500 hymn “Te Deum” (Te Deum laudamus), but also proposed it might represent a trademark to identify a quality product. At the time this article was written, no sources had been found to suggest potential candidates for pipe makers with the initials TD. Once historical records became more accessible, including through digitisation, we are able to trace the TD pipe in a little more detail and propose a vector for their creation and popularity explosion.
Current scholarship suggests that TD pipes were first made by Thomas Dormer, Sr., who was a pipe maker in London. The interesting link here is that the Dormer pipeworks had various agreements with the Hudson’s Bay Company to sell pipes between 1748-1770. HBC records also mention that Dormer went into business with his son Thomas Jr. for a brief time from 1754-1756, ending with the senior Dormer’s death. Thomas Jr. continued on with exporting pipes to North America until his death in 1771. By selling through the vast distribution networks of the Hudson’s Bay Company, TD pipes became a familiar sight in North America. The TD mark was plagiarised after Thomas Dormer Jr.’s death, reproduced in likely hundreds of styles by makers in England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, and Canada throughout the mid-eighteenth century all the way to the 20th century. This extreme popularity of the TD mark led to these types of pipes becoming genericised, similar to how Kleenex is often used as a term for any brand of tissue, and the name Q-tip instead of cotton swabs.
While some of the TD marks pipes look quite fancy, with the TD located in a cartouche or decorated with stars or foliage, our pipe bowl is very plain, which suggests it comes from the last half of the 19th century. I guess this is probably a Bannerman or a Henderson pipe, but that is a hunch from seeing similar impressed serif TDs on pipes from these manufacturers. Since we don’t have the part of the pipe with the maker’s mark, it will remain a mystery to us!
This is our third visit to BcGn-17, and hopefully this time we will be able to locate the house we have been looking for. Monday was our first day, and we spent it in the classroom learning about the archaeology of the region from Paleoindigenous times to present, and also a bit about the goals of the Nassau Mills Research Project.
Our project aims to collect and compare information about habitation and industry related to the mill complex at Nassau Mills. We’ve worked on the probable site of the first mill-owner’s house, Charles Perry, and reconstructed its probable phases of occupation (2017, 2018, 2024), in some cases we have been able to tie them in to particular events or people we know from the documentary record.
We have also been exploring small farmsteads located in the area of Nassau Mills. We can compare the material culture record from these small sites to get a better sense of how the surrounding farmers lived and what access to material they had from local stores or from Peterborough.
What we know about BcGn-17 so far is that it is the site of an initial occupation of this parcel, and it likely represents an improved log cabin site dating from the 1850s. We think the standing brick house on the parcel is probably the main house built by the owner in the later 1800s once bricks were readily available. We don’t know how long the cabin remained at the site, or even if it was turned into a farm building before it was eventually demolished.
While we have collected many artifacts in 2009 and 2023 that suggest a domestic use of this site, our excavations in 2023 were not successful in conclusively locating a house structure. On the very last day of excavation, we found the drain feature we had been tracking seemed to end in a pile of rubble that had some artifacts mixed into it. While we were excited to see a possible hint of the structure we were seeking, we alas had to cover it back up to wait until our return, which is now!
BcGn-17 awaiting our arrival! James and I laid out two excavation areas on Monday after everyone left. One should be over the rubble we located in 2023, and the other is in the vicinity of the cedar planking we found, in what might be a more midden-y artifact rich area.
We divided our complement of 26 into three groups, the Raccoons, the Rats, and the Earthworms. We will be rotating them through various tasks related to archaeological fieldwork during the course of our investigations. I as always, will try and provide a little peek into the operations!
Excavation crew consisting of the Raccoons in OA-2 (rubble) and the Earthworms in OA-3 (planking/midden).Some of the Rats with James getting ready to set up their instrument to survey a simulated artifact scatter.Another Rat Crew working on levelling their instrument before beginning their survey.
It was looking at lunch time as though a major storm would be arriving, so we packed up and headed back to the classroom for the afternoon. It looks like we would have been ok staying on site, but instead we managed to work in some hands-on artifact analysis for the Raccoons and Earthworms, while the Rats were off with James learning some more mysteries of surveying. We convened after break with a little overview of the Ontario Heritage Act and the Standards and Guidelines for Consultant Archaeologists, and then, just like that, day two was over.
It’s looking like a beautiful day tomorrow to be out on site. See you then!
We’re back after a long winter of hibernation with a brand new crew eager to learn archaeological field methods on our beautiful campus! We hope you will enjoy following along with us this season.
