Bill D. (VA)
Silver Member
Got an invite from my good friend Stan to join him in another dig at the mid-1600s site that we've been hitting once or twice a season for the last 10-12 years, and my regular digging buddy Dan accompanied us as well. This trash dump covers a large, sprawling area, and can be up to 5 feet deep in spots. Many amazing finds have come from this spot, but our primary goal each time we dig there is to recover colonial bottle seals or intact clay pipe bowls through both eyeballing and sifting. Once you find a potentially good spot to dig, and get through all the vines and roots and start hitting the trash layer, you've pretty much committed yourself to that one hole for the day due to its size and the time it takes to dig it out, sift, and refill. I found a mostly undug spot, but as luck would have it I could not get my hands on a seal or pipe bowl although the usual assortment of other artifacts were found. One was an interesting brass piece that at first glance in the dirt looked like the spout to a late 1700s cylindrical bottle as you can see from the comparison photo below. But it turned out to be the spout from an 18th century watering can, I believe. About 30 pipe stems also came to light as did some period pottery and glass that was mixed in with the large quantities of brick, oyster shells and bones. These pits also contain huge amounts of small iron comprised primarily of rosehead nails, some with splayed ends as shown in the example below. Going against conventional practice (and my worn out body), I decided to fill in that hole and venture out in search of a spot that might contain earlier 1600s artifacts. I ended up digging in a spot that had been quite productive for me on the last visit, but my attempt to expand on that area was quickly halted due to the large quantity of huge roots that extended to a great depth. Just before we left Dan and I discovered another small area with high potential immediately adjacent to where we've been digging all these years. A couple test holes revealed early onion bottle parts, pipe stems and other c1700 items, and this promising area will definitely be checked more thoroughly when we visit the site again at some point.
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