A Discovery

The scientists have confirmed it:  the bones under the parking lot in Leicester are indeed those of King Richard III!  I remember when the scientists excavated and were hopeful they'd solved the mystery, and with DNA, as well as corroborating evidence of the curved spine of the skeleton, the age, the protein-rich diet of a wealthy man, the skull wounds from battle, the date of the bones, the Greyfriars priory location confirmed by an historian--it's all mentioned in the NYTimes article.  I'll be equally fascinated to see the re-burial of the bones in Leicester Cathedral next year, as befits an English monarch, albeit a much-maligned and disputed one.

Dig It!

An email from Sis and Bud's teacher:


Remind me to file this under "Something you don't hear everyday"--"We went on an archaeological dig before school." !


And it's true.  We did go on an archaeological dig this morning, being a little late to school.  Only we weren't the ones digging.  Archaeologists are digging some test trenches in the yard at "my" historic house, having dug two previous test pits in the midden and privvy.  They've found what you would expect to find from a site continuously occupied since the end of the 17th century:  porcelain fragments, redware fragments, nails, pins, glassware bits, buttons, some grapeshot from the Revolutionary War, and, making up the majority of the finds, bones and shells of oysters and clams.

We spoke to the archaeologists while they dug and sifted, recorded and drew.  Sis and Bud got to see the man in the pit check the soil sample against his field Munsell soil chart to record the "sandy loam" or "loamy sand" or whatever on the locus sheet where he would make notes about finds and features and also later draw the trench level before moving on to the last level of habitation (the terminus--old sand--which he was just reaching as we left).  He also hacked away at an obstructive tree root with a machete.  From the pit, which was about 4 1/2' deep and about 6 x 4' in size with old water pipes and a tree root, the rocky soil (so common in CT, they said) was put in a bucket and then sifted on a screen for archaeologists to look for the small finds.  Another archaeologist let us watch her sort and showed the kids a bit of everything she found, mainly shells (they ate a lot of oysters and clams), bones (one from a cow while we were there), and some redware. She described how the calcium-rich shells often helped preserve the more delicate artifacts which would otherwise decay in our acidic soil. She also pulled out some earlier finds, proudly showing the kids a rare large fragment of handpainted-with-blue-stars Delftware, which she said was often too delicate to find more than tiny pieces of (I'd say the two fragments made up more than half a dish/saucer shape).  She mentioned that they had found a large milk pan, for cooling milk before making butter, the day before.  And a small doll's head.   We asked her what the most exciting find she'd ever uncovered was and she said, from a dig in Europe, a Neanderthal's stone tool.   She also likes the Native American artifacts she's uncovered in New England, amazed at how beautiful they can make stone for simple tools.  


After she sorted the dirt and placed the finds in small bags, labeled with the trench quadrant location, she actually poured clean dirt back in the bag.  Sis asked, "If you just sifted it, why did you put dirt back in the bag?"  Good question, the archaeologist replied, noting that the dirt actually protects the fragments during transportation and storage before cleaning.  They also use the sifted dirt to back fill the site, after lining it with plastic, so they know where they've dug.  Then back at the office, after the artifacts are washed and recorded, and the locus sheets (which they have, "because," she said, "we'll forget by Monday!") are compiled, the archaeologists write a report for us so we know what they found and what it might mean.  She said that archaeologists are schooled in lots of disciplines--history, art (and drawing skills!), math, science--combined with strength and endurance and a love of the outdoors.


"I want to be an archaeologist," Sis proclaimed excitedly, inspired by the visit.  Which is absolutely why we were late to school this morning!

Playing in the Dirt

I spent this morning at the historic house sorting through dirty bags of artifacts found during excavations under the house's floorboards a decade ago, in preparation for docent training on our new 5th-grade tour which will include a section on archaeology.  It was great fun, even if most of the finds were uninteresting and, well, gross--like rat and mouse skulls and bones.  But I liked finding even the ordinary bits of broken crockery, bent nails and pins, and buttons, even if their exact dates are uncertain, as least to me.  I can picture the house's inhabitants and history more clearly through their odd bits of detritus.

It all reminded me of my time helping on an excavation of a Roman bathhouse near Carthage, Tunisia.  There, we found vaulting tubes (to make ceilings), hypocaust tiles (to hold up the bathhouse floor), tesserae (from the mosaic floors), rainbow-colored glass (it gets that tint from being buried), and, my favorite find, a fragment of a small statuette of a Roman matron.  It was hot, dirty, hard work with our heads by our ankles hours a day, garden trowel in hand, in the baking North African summer, with a short break for "cass croute" of dark chocolate and cookies.  But our dig house had a view of the Mediterranean and a great cook, who made fantastic couscous with chicken, carrots, and potatoes steamed in a giant, battered washtub-like basin.  

I think a dig in a New England summer might have been easier, if not quite as memorable, but if there was another one, I'd love to be there.

Just a selection of finds, including bits of pottery and glass, button, nails, bones and teeth, and oyster shells.

A photo of the original excavation under the floorboards, where the above finds were discovered.

My New Project

About a year ago, I was deep into research on the history of slavery in Connecticut, as part of my work on the education committee of a local historic house.  I learned how this state was the "Georgia of the North," with more slaves than any other New England colony, and also how slaves continued their West African religious practices such as hiding minkisi under floorboards for protection.  I also spent some time looking into pirates and privateers who operated in the waters of Long Island Sound.

Now I'm beginning research on Native Americans in colonial Connecticut, in the 18th-century.  It's just the beginning of my research, but with both the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and the Institute for American Indian Studies here in the state, I know I'll turn up some interesting information to share with the fifth graders come April.  But one statistic strikes me:  there were approximately 30,000 Native Americans here in what is now Connecticut when colonists arrived.  By 1762, there were less than 1,000.

We're also going to be including some discussion of archaeology, essentially how we as historians and docents learn about the ordinary people who didn't make it into the written historical record.  There have been thousands of artifacts discovered at our site, which should make for wonderful discussion, even if we can't show the classes anything more than pictures of objects or replicas.  Of course, when I was in elementary school, Indiana Jones popularized archaeology.  I hope our tour will be able to do the same and get the students excited about our local history and how we learn it.