February 22-26 under a contract with Charles County, Dr. Tim Horsley of Horsley Archaeological Prospection, LLC investigated parts of Port Tobacco using geophysical methods. This was a professional project but CCASM members were able to help lay in lines and get a chance to experience what was involved.
The magnetometry survey was completed the first day. (It was a long day.) The area being investigated included the front yard of Stagg Hall as well as the lot across the street to the south. As you can see even the road between was investigated.
It took three days to complete the ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey - mainly because of the rain. There were two half days when the rain called a halt to things.
And we also had to deal with the wind. In addition to making us cold, it kept blowing the tape on the road. But we came up with a way to keep the lines on the road straight.
Now we just have to wait for the report. It won't have all the answers, but it will give us a lot of clues to what is happening in the ground.
CCASM members that helped included Mary, Evelyn, Denise, and Carol. And Charles County Archaeologist Esther Read was in charge.
On March 7 Jim Gibb returned to the site and used his transit to obtain the coordinates for the various points that Tim had identified with yellow plastic stakes and flags. Mary assisted him by holding the stadia rod.
1 comments:
Thanks to everyone that came out and helped! We got alot done. While I know it's hard to wait, the magnetometry did answer the mystery of the gravel layer in the first unit we dug in the Stagg Hall yard in 2015...the septic system. I got to see the first two days of GPR data, which Tim needs to analyze fully, but it looks like we might be able to see where the 1970s excavation area was. This won't be the individual units, just the wider area, but that will help us to figure out where Area B, Feature 1 was and give a partial location to all those artifacts we've been cataloging in the SPRT collection.
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