C. F. Lindgren Photographs

I had the great pleasure of participating in an archaeological recently. I've never done anything like that before. The site was in Duxbury, Massachusetts. To get a complete description of the task go to the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society's page. They were looking for evidence that a house at actually existed at the location from the 1630's. In between Hurricane Sandy, and an incredibly powerful Northeaster, volunteers att5empted to find evidence of the house. I participated in the first two days of the dig, and collected a sand sample. The sample was really soil heavy, but there was a percentage of sand, so I'm posting it here. Enjoy!!

 TEST PIT 15-16M

On the first day of the dig each group was assigned a site. Our location was a one meter square along a line at the segment from 15 to 16 meters. Our first task was to remove the grass and then dig down to a depth of 10 cm collecting whatever we found. By the end of the second day we had completed our pit digging down to a depth of 30 cm. Numerous fragmented bricks and large stones were left in place at the pit.

EVIDENCE OF COAL

At a depth of ≈10cm we discovered a layer of burnt coal (white). We also discovered a large piece of vitrified coal that was brilliantly colored with a high glaze.

SHELLS

We found numerous shell fragments all through the 30 cm column. At the very bottom we came across the two perfectly preserved shells.

BONE FRAGMENTS

Shown below are fragments of duck bones (left), and a pig bone (right).

ARTIFACTS

We found many artifacts in our pit. Shown below is a metallic button (top left), smoking pipe stem (top right), porcelain shard (bottom left), and a metal fragment that probably came from a coal bucket (bottom right). In addition be found numerous nails both machined and hand made. The machine were all found at 0-10cm, while the hand made were found deeper. A porcelain button was found at 30 cm. A leg from a metal cooking pot, and glazed pottery were also discovered at 30 cm.

Return to Massachusetts Sand to view high resolution versions of all Massachusetts sand samples. Click on the thumbnails above to view high resolution versions of the dig images.

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