Bill D. (VA)
Silver Member
About 4-5 years ago when I found the 2 hammered silver caches here in southeast Virginia I was also able to probe out an early trash pit about 200 feet from where the coins were found. At that time my friends Chuck, Evan and myself dug this pit out and eyeballed quite a few early artifacts including pottery, pipe stems and bowls, and some nice iron and brass items (see first pic below for some of those finds). We thought we had been thorough in our recoveries, but later I got thinking that we probably should have sifted that spot. Fast forward to a few days ago. After searching unsuccessfully at the site for additional hammered coins with my GPX-5000 Chuck and I decided to dig a couple of small test holes in the pit area and sift the dirt. In only a few minutes we had recovered some early pipe stems and pottery shards. We decided we needed to go back and dig out and sift a larger hole as a representative sample to determine is it would be productive to re-dig and sift the entire pit. This pit, by the way, was irregular shaped but was about 10-15 feet wide by 4 feet deep which is a huge amount of dirt to move and sift. This past Tues we dug out an area about 5 feet in length, 3 feet wide, and 4 feet deep. We were very surprised at the large number of items that we had missed on our first attempt more than 4 years ago. Part of our success was attributed to digging all the way to the bottom before moving forward. It’s easy when you’re finding artifacts in the wall to keep undercutting and not go all the way to the bottom where the best and oldest artifacts could lie. In fact, we recovered 3 colonial hoes between the 3 and 4 foot level that we somehow missed before. These are heavily encrusted and it will take a lot of electrolysis work to get them cleaned up. We also dug about 100 early pipe stem pieces with large bores which date to the 1600s along with several bowls. Some are marked including the “LE” found on one of the stems and a bowl piece. These came from the Bristol pipemaker Llewellin Evans who was in business from 1661-86. Also dug another Wil Evans marked stem similar to one I dug out of this pit 4 years ago which also dates to the latter half of the 17[SUP]th[/SUP] century. And I also found an incuse mark “WS” stamped on the heel of a bulbous bowl which was the makers mark for William Sterridge (1610-40). The pottery shards recovered were rather few and mostly small, but were very early and included red earthenwares and a variety of tin-glazed wares including delft. Some of these will match up with what I already have, and hopefully by the time we totally dig out this pit I can do some partial reconstructions. There was also almost no glass in this pit which I thought was very unusual. Only one pontilled base to a small square utility bottle was found along with a couple of tiny shards. In addition to the hoes quite a bit of small iron was found including a lot of rosehead nails. I cleaned up a couple of these and they make nice looking display pieces. I also did some electrolysis on a small iron concretion that turned out to be part of a pair of early scissors. The main obstacle to digging in this pit was not its size, but the fact that it contained a tremendous quantity of oyster shells and animal bone which made it almost impossible at times to even penetrate the tip of the shovel into the dirt. It also made it quite difficult when sifting dirt back into the hole. Below are some pics of our digs in this first full attempt at sifting, and we hope to make it back soon to continue systematically digging out every cubic inch of the pit. I’ll provide another update after the next dig which will hopefully be in the next few days.
Amazon Forum Fav 👍
Attachments
Last edited:
Upvote
18
