Dr. Julie King has a grant for investigating a mid-17th century site at the George Washington Birthplace National Monument on Pope's Creek in Virginia. The site is in danger of loss through erosion. Dr. King invited CCASM to come and volunteer in the field. Initially it was just for a half day, but later she indicted her crew were clamoring for us to return. (Maybe they weren't exactly clamoring, but they did seem to enjoy working with us as we did with them.)
Wednesday October 19 CCASM members Mary, Elsie, Pat, and Carol
once again carpooled to George Washington Birthplace National Monument for an opportunity to be in the field for part of a
day (9am-2:30pm). Ned arrived earlier at 7. We came prepared for a chilly day (56 degree high). The sun was out, the air was crisp, and it was a great day. After Ned, Pat, and Carol helped Garrett complete a test unit, everyone worked on a new unit. The plowzone in this unit contained lots of interesting artifacts in addition to shells (of course). We found several Pope's Creek pottery sherds including one thick piece that would have been near the base of a large vessel. There was also early Colonial ceramics, a couple of machine cut nails, fire cracked rocks, various unidentified Native American pottery sherds, ... Really a nice day.
Tuesday October 18 Ned again volunteered on the site for the whole day. The weather had turned colder and there were 10-15 mph wind gusts as well a sustained wind coming off the Potomac. Since the weather kept changing, it was good to wear lots of layers. Today we found mostly shell, a few nails, possible fire-cracked rocks, flakes, a scraper, two pieces of lead shot, and a fair amount of ceramics. Two park service men came by at lunchtime doing GPS measurements of the shoreline to document current and future erosion. Here is Julie's crew (Megan, Travis, Caitlin, Garrett, Aidin)
Thanks to Ned for the photo.
Friday October 14 Ned again volunteered on the site for half a day. Due to heavy Friday afternoon traffic on the Nice-Middleton Bridge (the old one), the crew only works half a day on Fridays.
Wednesday October 12 Ned traveled to the site arriving at 6:45 (too early for the rest of us). The STPs were long finished, and the crew had already started laying out units. Megan laid out two new test units first thing. Aidin and Ned were able to complete the unit farthest down the peninsula. That unit had some shell, a few possible ceramics, three nails, and a very small fragment of pipe initialed WE which was either William Evans of Bristol (1660-1682) or William Evans II (1667-1682). The pipe fragment was their artifact of the day. Garrett finished up the sidewalls of a unit they were calling the Devil Unit. They had several of these hard-subsoil units that took too long to complete. Travis spent the day documenting the 4-unit combo where they detected a feature or two that might be indigenous. Also Ned was able to cross the new Nice-Middleton Bridge on the way home.
Wednesday September 21 CCASM members Mary, Elsie, Pat, Ned, and Carol carpooled to George Washington Birthplace National Monument on Pope's Creek in Virginia for an opportunity to be in the field for part of a day (9am-2:30pm). The weather was perfect, and we even got to wear our new CCASM t-shirts.
We worked with Julie's crew--Megan, Travis, Garrett, Aidin, and Caitlin for 5.5 hours sifting dirt from four different test units We recovered both Native American artifacts such as pottery sherds and pipe fragments as well as historic artifacts including colonial ceramics and nails.
If you think the screens look somewhat tilted, they weren't on level ground.
Also here's the rest of Julie's Crew.
Afterwards we listened to a video at the Visitor's Center and walked around the grounds looking at the various buildings. Overall a really nice day.
Many thanks to Mary for driving.
