Week four of the Poplar Forest Archaeological Field School has been a time of expanding on previous knowledge. The excitement of the week in the field has been uncovering what appears to be a builder’s trench in at least two of the units. This seems to indicate that we have indeed found a building, but we have yet to determine exactly what its purpose was. We have also re-opened older units to re-evaluate the previous findings, as well as to perform additional soil testing.
Our lectures this week have been on ways to find information about a site without excavating. On Monday we had a visiting geoarchaeologist, Jason Windingstad, study the soil at the site and discuss his specialty with us. Wednesday’s lecture by Dr. Barbara Heath was on the genealogy of the family of John Wayles – Jefferson’s father-in-law – and that of his slaves. Finally, on Thursday we had a visiting archaeological geophysicist, Eileen Ernenwein, discuss her specialty with us, and show us some analysis of topographic data that we have been collecting from our site.
This week in the lab, we focused on quantifying and dating artifacts, and determining what various groups of artifacts can tell us about the date of the site that they came from. We also worked on mapping artifact locations, as well as putting broken artifacts back together – a process called mending. On Friday we were introduced to the use of a floatation machine, which separates smaller artifacts than can be found in the field with larger screens, and sorts them by density.
Our assigned readings for the week dealt with analyzing man’s interaction with nature in the archaeological record, mostly by the plant and animal remains found on a site. Some of the readings also discussed such diverse topics as farmstead landscapes, soil chemistry, palynology, and geophysical surveys.
In the next week, we hope to find more of the footprint of the building we have found, and determine what its original use was. We will also be looking toward the future with lectures on how to get jobs in archaeology.
