Dr. Liza Gijanto, Associate Professor of Anthropology at St Mary's College of
Maryland,
invited CCASM members to volunteer with her and her students as
they investigate the Chiles Site at Douglas Point.
Dr. Gjanto is working with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to try and define the limits of the house site and to test a structure that they hope is an enslaved quarter site. Dr. Wes Willoughby is the BLM archaeologist for the project. The goal is to find out as much as they can about the enslaved and possibly emancipated population and incorporate this history into the overall site interpretation. Work, mainly STPs, had previously been done at the site in 2005 by William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research. To see an overview of that work, check out https://www.wm.edu/sites/wmcar/research/chiles/archaeology/
Friday March 15 Carol returned to the site and was able to help with the troweling in one of the units. Interestingly there were a lot of fat rusty nails as well as some brick fragments in this unit, but there were more bricks in the adjacent unit. Saturday will be the last day for the crew to be on site during Spring Break, but there may be other Saturdays that the crew will be on site. Here is a picture of the students we worked with this week. Always fun to work with students.
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| The St Mary's College Crew |
Wednesday March 13 Mary, Linda, Doug, and Carol volunteered on the site. Doug and Linda screened soil from the various units including from Unit 10 that Carol and Mary spent the day troweling. The troweling was a little different since the grass roots were also removed with a trowel rather than by flat shoveling. And there were lot of roots crisscrossing the unit that required clipping or pruning. The few artifacts recovered (brick fragments, flat glass fragments, possible nail,...) came from the southwest part of the unit, We weren't able to complete the level before we left. Still it was an interesting experience.
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| Screening in the morning (new units opened) |
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| Screening in afternoon |
Tuesday March 12 was the first day for volunteers on the site. Mary, Linda, Elsie, and Carol worked with the students/crew (Mac, Emilia, Laura, Yasmin) on a number of test units, mainly screening although Carol also troweled. Since this was the upper level of the units, we weren't finding a lot, but it's always fun to work on a site when the weather is nice.
Interestingly Linda's parents had once rented part of the Chiles Site for farming. Also two men whose family had lived near the house visited us along with Cat Warren, the project genealogist. There were a lot of stories swapped.
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| CCASM members and students screening |
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| Using drone to document site |
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| Visitors with connection to site |
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