Hi, I'm Site Supervisor Anna Shackelford, and I'm Staff Archaeologist Ryan Krank and we're down
here at the southeast corner of James Fort, where we've been excavating for just over a year now.
Ryan: We have two reasons as to why we've decided to start digging here.
The first is to assess the condition of the sea wall, which has protected the island
from erosion for over a hundred years. The second reason is to expose features related
to the east bulwark so that we can refine our understanding of the shape of the 1607 Fort.
Anna: So in order to accomplish these goals we opened up three test units right next to the seawall,
where we run into different deposits to fill from all sorts of time periods. So
more modern deposits, including part of our
early 1900s seawall, as well as a concrete septic tank that was put in sometime in the 1930s.
Ryan: Underneath those more modern deposits, we've actually unearthed an expansive midden
that we've determined to be from the second quarter of the 17th century. That mitten
actually sealed the features that we were looking for in relation to the fort.
Anna: Behind me you can see the profile for one of our test units down by the seawall and that just means
you can see all of the strata that we've been digging through to get down to where I'm standing.
Up top, you can see we have a whole bunch of backfill from previous excavations down here.
Below that, we have this sandy layer here, which we believe is material that was dredged up from the
James River and then dumped on the old shoreline in order to build it up and prevent more erosion.
Below that, that's when we start seeing some intact 17th century deposits. So first, we have
this very highly concentrated brick layer, which we believe is deconstruction fill from a warehouse
owned by merchant John White, just to the north, and then just below that is where we start seeing this
midden, this trash pile, that we had to dig through through in order to get to these intact James Fort
period features. Speaking of merchant John White, Ryan is going to talk to y'all a little bit about
some post holes as well as brick foundations that may relate to other buildings on the property.
Ryan: Back in the spring, when we were digging the westernmost test unit,
my colleague Nicole Roenicke uncovered a pair of foundations. These foundations were constructed
directly atop a midden or trash pit, that was spread across much of this area. The midden was
used in the second quarter of the 17th century. This means our buildings date to after 1650 or so.
Both foundations were on the same spot: one built on top of the other. The newer foundation
was constructed of half bricks and was one brick wide overall. Notably, the bricks were not bonded
with mortar, instead sand from the midden was used to keep the bricks in place. In fact,
Nicole found a broken crucible base between some of the bricks. The way this foundation is built,
it could not have supported brick walls, instead it probably supported a wooden frame building.
The earlier foundation seems to have been part of a floor, based on the way the bricks were laid.
The bricks are more intact and were bonded primarily with clay, instead of sand from
the midden. It is possible that a storm or other disaster destroyed this earlier building
and the second foundation represents rebuilding on the same site, possibly reusing bricks from
the destroyed building. A short distance to the east, in our middle unit, we found another brick foundation.
This foundation seems to match with our reconstructed building, as it also used half
bricks and a one brick wide arrangement, maybe the same structure spanning both these units.
Anna: As I mentioned before, this area along the waterfront was owned by a merchant named John
White in the mid-1640s. Back in the mid-1990s, our predecessors found dry-laid stone foundations
north of where we have been digging, which they identified as John White's warehouse.
There may have been other buildings on John White's property, and these
foundations may represent other structures that he owned. Just to the north of where we are,
previous excavators also found post holes and part of a foundation that cut into the midden.
These features seem to align with our brick foundations and may be additional portions of our building.
We also found a post hole similar to those to the north right next to the new foundation,
making this association much more likely. In the 17th century buildings, might be constructed on
brick foundations or partial foundations, but also incorporate post in ground architecture.
These buildings are very interesting, but there's more history to uncover here. So we actually removed
both foundations to expose the midden that was underneath and hopefully find earlier deposits.
Ryan: To get down to the bulwark features that we're looking for, we actually had to
dig through what we call a midden, basically a trash heap. In this case, we think from the 1630s
or so, give or take, and we've gotten through the midden throughout most of this test unit.
However, here we left a ledge so that we could expose a profile and get an idea of what the stratigraphy
of the layers look like as we dig down further. The midden itself is still intact. Up on this
ledge, as a matter of fact, behind me you can see a handful of artifacts sticking out of the wall,
some case bottle glass and the bottom of a ceramic pot. This midden's been very artifact rich and
there's been a pretty broad variety of what we're finding here. We found a lot of construction
debris, so lots of bricks, mortar, nails. We found a lot of ceramics. We found a lot of case bottles,
lots of food scraps, so animal bones, oyster shells, things like that as well,
evidence of smithing, lots of metal working and clinker, which is a byproduct of
metal working. So you know, it's been pretty broad and leads us to believe that this was sort of a
designated town dump area. This midden, which has an abundance of artifacts in it, we're thinking
is from the 1630s and 40s and that's because of the types of artifacts that we're pulling
out and the date ranges we have for these. As well as the absence of certain artifacts,
including an abundance of Native American ceramic.
So as we dig through this mitten, we have to
change up the way that we sift through the soil and collect our artifacts. While in higher layers
we were using a quarter-inch screen, as we've gotten down here we've actually started using
our water screen, which basically employs a window mesh underneath an eighth-inch screen
that is all pushed through with water, allowing us to find even the smallest artifact fragments.
Anna: Now that we've excavated through the midden in these test units,
we can take a closer look at all of these intact James Fort period features.
So we're excited to get started on that. Stay tuned later to see what we find out.