Week 2- 7/21/03 to 7/25/03

Many more pictures this week!

We started out the week with a wonderful presentation by Bernard Drew, author of a massive history of Great Barrington. Using a variety of interesting props, he gave us the history of the town since the 17^th century in just under 45 minutes. It was wonderfully entertaining, and let us all know that Great Barrington is a town with many famous convergences of personalities and events.

Figure 1- Bernie shows off a small replica of a famous statue in G.B., while Liz examines a Stanley thermos.

Figure 2- Liz holds a W.E.B. Du Bois doll while others look on with incredulity.

The main archaeological event of Monday was the opening of the first full excavation unit, PI 3, right smack in the middle of midden B. The guess is that this is the spot where the house was pushed back to when it was demolished. Of the many artifacts which came out of this unit, most appear to corroborate that theory. The artifacts are predominantly domestic items from the 20^th century, but there is a noticeable lack of architectural remains, which makes us skeptical as to the demolished house hypothesis.

Figure 3- Alex mapping PI 4.

Figure 4- Kerry guiding us through pit tours midweek.

Later in the week, we opened up PI’s 4-8 in various places around the property. One unit was put in at the cellar hole, another at the probable location of the renovated chimney, another in midden A in the barn area, another adjacent to the east chimney in the cellar foundation, and one more to test an anomaly in the side yard discovered by the resistivity survey.

In the lab, the 83/84 work continued, but with the opening of units at the site, the artifacts began to flow in for processing. The major project was getting through the midden B artifacts, which were numerous.

Figure 5- Colin, Alex, and Wendy process 83/84 artifacts at the lab.

On Thursday, Jessica Neuwirth from Historic Deerfield came to speak to us about her work on African-American sites in Maryland. She explained about two different kinds of African-American material traces that she encountered, which involved African Nkisi (a cash of crystals and other ceremonial objects beneath a house), and a cosmogram (an African map of the cosmos) drawn by the placement of everyday objects around the interior of a house.

Figure 6- Ruth, Rachel, and Liz listen intently to Jessica.

At one point, the resistivity meter ran out of power, so we worked on a detailed map of the barn area with the Total Station. The pit and mound anomalies were mapped alongside the foundations of the house and in the barn area, in order to gain a clearer picture of any subsurface features.

Figure 7- Wendy and Billy dutifully mapping the site.

Figure 8- Andy picks through the material record.