Week Four - Emily Sicher

This past week was one of our busiest weeks yet. Now into our fourth week we have moved away from the hearth to a site just north of it. We opened several new units and made a lot of progress in each of them. On Monday Carin was sick and rather then leaving the very capable Jess in charge of 10 students we got the day off. But we were ready to start work on Tuesday. We spent the day opening new units and looking for changes in the soil. The units in the middle could possibly be the floor to the huts, which we would be able to see by changes in soil color and texture. We opened up a unit at the north end that was filled with rocks. As we dug deeper we discovered these rocks were chimney fall.

On Wednesday we spent the morning digging but by lunchtime rain was threatening to hit. After our lunch break we headed to Temple do re-bag the artifacts we washed last week. We learned how to label a bag properly so Carin and Jesse can catalog them later on. With the ten of all working on it we were able to get all of them re-bagged and relabeled, which made Carin and Jesse pretty happy.

Thursday we closed out the unit with all the rocks and moved to the unit just above it, which seems to have more rocks than the first one. It looks very promising. In other units we found a pieces of redware ceramic. This particular piece of ceramic was very regional to Philadelphia and could also indicate status of the person staying in the hut. A person of higher status like an officer, might have had something nicer to eat off of like the tin glazed ceramics we found earlier in the dig, where as an enlisted man would have had the redware which was more common. We also found a Musket ball. This is the second one that has been found since we started digging this summer. It appears to have been rammed into the gun but never fired.

Friday morning we got a visit for Joe Blondino, one of the excavators from George Washington’s Headquarters, a dig held earlier this summer at Valley Forge. He put a tarp over the site to help block out the sunlight and make it easier for Carin and Jesse to see the possible soil changes. Dr Orr came by along with another Temple Grad student named Lou who had worked on the site in previous summers. They were able to give Carin and Jesse a different perspective on the things and their ideas as to where the hut floor might be. Towards the end of the day a very exciting discovery was made. Carin and Jess took a look at the unit with all the rocks in it and discovered 3 of the rocks were flat. When we cleaned around it a little better we realized that we had found a hearth. This is a very exciting and important find. It says we definitely have a hut, and it can help them figure out the dimensions of the hut. Just a week before our Public Archaeology day this will give us something really neat to show them. We are even more excited to dig next week with the discovery of the hearth. Who knows what we will find in our last two weeks.

Week Four Summary

Week four has been a week of constant flux for the excavation. Every other day there has been something completely new to contend with. However, despite these setbacks, we have gotten a lot accomplished.

We began the week with a day off due to Carin’s unfortunate illness. Luckily with that day of rest under her belt, we were able to jump right in and get to work on Tuesday. This week we were finally able to devote our full attention to the new potential hut site, just North of the 2008 hearth. The main goal for this area is to get as much of the potential feature opened and exposed, so that we will be able to see the full picture. At the beginning of the week we had five units along the Western and Southern edge open. From this, we were able to discern what looks like the Western and Southern edges of a rectangular dark stain.

As we continued on with the excavation, we opened two more units to the North to try a get a better picture. This was done so that we could see what was taking place with the rocks that we could see exposed just to the West of the large tree in the excavation area. This would turn out to be a big discovery on the final day of the week.

Come Thursday, after suffering yet another rain day (luckily we got a morning of digging in and an afternoon at Temple), we resumed excavation with now seven units open. At this point, we had basically all but a portion of the North edge as well as the Northeastern corned of the feature exposed. Thursday also brought our first definitively encampment artifact from this potential hut site. Out of the center of the Western edge of the feature came a musket ball with very diagnostic feature. From what we can observe, it looks like the ball has been loaded into a musket, but had not been fired. This can be identified by a flattened side that would be the result of a ramrod forcing the ball into the barrel. In addition to this, there is also a scar from where a “worm” (similar to a corkscrew) was drilled into the ball to remove it from the barrel, unfired. The feature has also yielded pieces of a clay pipe, the second one we have found in our excavations at the Chapel.

Friday brought a new look for the site. Who would have though that in the middle of the woods we would choose to excavate in the one area that is completely in the sun. To help combat this one of our fellow archaeologists, Joe Blondino, came by and helped us erect a tent over the entire area of excavation. With this in place, we will no longer have to combat the sun’s harsh drying effects on the site.

Getting back to the units with the exposed rocks; we have continued to excavate these units, all the while trying to figure out what is chimney fall and what might be actual intact hearth structure. All we long, it had been looking like we might be faced with a hearth that had been destroyed both by the deconstruction of the hut, as well at root action from the adjacent tree. As we removed most of the out of place stones, it became apparent that below them there were several large, flat stones that were still in place. Carin is fairly confident that we have the remains of a hearth. If this is the case, then we would have another corner hearth yet again. Could we have an entire brigade of corner hearths?

We look forward to excavating more of this feature to get a better idea of what to come. With two weeks to go, we still have a lot on our plate. More to come!

--Jesse

Week Three Summary

It has been a great three weeks so far, and it occurs to me that we are at the halfway point in our class! The days have gone quickly, and yet I feel there is still so much to do. We have completed our investigations around the hut hearth that was discovered last summer by the field crew, and we continue to have questions about it. It seems unlikely at this point that we’ll ever find out the dimensions of this particular hut. We can tell that its hearth was in the northwest corner of the hut, but whether the longer dimension was the north and south walls or the east and west walls will probably never be determined. We did, however, discover yet another trashpit fairly directly north of the hearth, reinforcing the idea of what is ‘inside’ and what is ‘outside’ in regards to the structure.

We did have a lab day on Tuesday, because Mother Nature had ideas other than digging – and it was a beneficial experience for the students. As those who have gone through field school before can attest, often a student will discover during his/her first field experience whether they are “dirt” archaeologists, “lab” archaeologists, or whether they prefer not to pursue this career at all. In light of this revelation, I was glad to have an entire day in which Jesse and I could impart some “labby” wisdom. The students were able to participate in the first and a very important part of the process – the washing and dry-brushing of artifacts. Metal and charcoal are dry-brushed, whereas the majority of other artifacts are washed gently in water. The lab is where a visitor is most likely to see a toothbrush, not the field; they are very practical tools for the delicate work that comes after digging. An entire day in the lab with your fingers in lukewarm water, or coated in charcoal dust can be a tedious experience, but some people really enjoy handling the artifacts, and connecting with them through the gratifying experience of cleaning them up to preserve them for the future.

After the delay, we thought the rain was gone for the week, but we were wrong, and on Thursday we were chased inside after lunch, where we got to spend part of the afternoon watching a new episode of Time Team America on PBS’ website. If you haven’t seen the show, I recommend you check it out! You should do so with the understanding though, that this is not typical archaeology. Archaeology is typically done over a much longer period of time, and usually without such large machinery, but the show is valuable in many respects. It is making archaeology accessible and interesting to the public; something very near to my heart. The past belongs to everyone, not just to academics who have the opportunity to discover it in the soil, and programs like Time Team America, while not perfect in their approach or methodology, are advancing that idea in a wonderful way. It also provides an excellent lesson in interpretation – how and why we do what we do, for ourselves and for our visitors, to eager field students like ours.

On Friday, a chilly day to start with, we moved slightly further north of the hut hearth site in order to investigate a suspicious depression in the landscape flanked by a tree growing out of some large, rather telling rocks. Our students wrote about it this week, check out their blog entries! We suspect it may be another hut, and as the day warmed up and the sun came out, we started seeing more evidence of the potential for another structure! Though people often believe that our main objective in digging a site is to find artifacts, the small things that people drop/lose/throw away, but in fact something that can sometimes tell us more than those little things are features: the non-portable artifacts. Features are human-made objects that don’t move, like trashpits, or hearths. They are just as informative, if not more so, than a few pieces of broken ceramic or glass; and they are what we hope to find in the northern excavation. We are looking for another hearth, and maybe this time, the floor of a hut or at least its dimensions. Stay tuned, many exciting discoveries are sure to come in the next three weeks!

--Carin

Week Three - Laura Kaufman

For our third week in Valley Forge, we continued expanding the area located around the large hearth, which had been found through the previous year’s excavation. Located in the unit just north of where the hearth lays, we have uncovered what we recognize to be the chimney fall from the hut. Also to the northeast of the hearth, a trash pit feature was found, which thus far has produced a number of animal bones and glass, some charcoal and nails. As for the huts dimensions, we are still unsure how the building was constructed, or even who had occupied the living quarters during the revolution.

Due to storms in the area on Tuesday the crew met at Temple in the archaeology lab. This gave us a prime opportunity to see a different side of archaeology. For many of us it was the first time we experienced the cleaning and cataloging process of artifacts. We cleaned numerous artifacts that had been found by the 2007 Field School, which had also excavated in Valley Forge at the Washington Memorial Chapel. It appeared that some of my fellow classmates did not entirely enjoy doing the lab work, while others remained interested in seeing what had been found prior to our field school. This was a nice opportunity to obtain an understanding of lab work, while also giving us more examples of cultural materials that we should be on the look out for during our own work at the site.

As we continued to have trouble with the rain on Thursday, we could only put in a half-day on excavating. In the afternoon, we set up a pair of 10’ x 10’ units a short distance north of our current excavation at the hearth. A suspicious collection of rocks, a tree and a rectangular indent in the ground has led to a hypothesis that a hut once stood in the location of our future excavation spot. Since the rocks could be an indication of a hearth/chimney fall and trees often like to grow in the rich organic soils left behind from a hearth, a rectangular indentation in front of the tree was one more reason to pick this as our next spot. After finding little evidence of who camped at the location of our hearth excavation, we can only hope to find more information about who may have spent the 1778 winter on the chapel grounds. Friday we began opening up new grid units at the suspicious area as we reach the half way point of our field school experience.

Week Three - Emily Suarez

This week on the excavation of Washington Memorial Chapel grounds, brings about a couple of rainy days that have put a damper on the summer but that have not gotten in the way of our archaeology filled days. After learning the array of techniques necessary to actually do archaeology, we embarked on the journey to a greater understanding on the methods of archaeology and just why things are done the way they are. Now that it is the third week, everyone seems to be getting much more comfortable around each other and around their shovel and trowel. We are starting to think less about the technique and more about the story that archaeology will tell. Little did we know that we would reach a new level of understanding regarding the excavation site and the rest of the National Park Service.

Monday morning Carin informed us that we would have a visitor from the Temple radio station. It was really cool to see just how much interest our dig as well as the dig in Washington’s Headquarters has generated. Later that morning we also received a visit from raffle ticker winners, Adrianna and her mother, who won a chance to be archaeologists for a day. They had a blast, as did we. Park visitors have been joining us throughout the week to hear the story of what we have been uncovering and now the students are in charge of giving the tours. Wednesday nights after the Chapel’s Carillon Concert, visitors also have a chance to get a tour of the site.

The field school has been welcomed with open arms by the church and their volunteers and they are glad to tell people about the excavation. Later on in the week during the rain, we got a chance to clean and process artifacts in Temple’s Grad Archaeology lab. It was a great learning experience for all especially because it allows one to see if they best fit in a lab setting or not. We have been fortunate to find features in the soil, which can tell us more about what might have happened during the winter of 1777. Features, as important as artifacts, seem to be telling the story of this encampment. We pay particular attention to dark changes in the soil, which might suggest the presence of post holes, or trash pits among other things. You can almost sense the excitement in the air whenever something “interesting” has been found. We all seem to stop and listen for Carin and Jesse’s verdict.

Among the many things, our site contains a large hearth with a trash pit located on the west side of it and a large amount of chimney fall to the northeast. The possible story behind the trash pit is that prior to its use as one, the hole was dug in order to mix the clay mixture necessary to construct huts. Later on it was used to discard any waste created by the brigade. The chimney fall could have been caused by the men who were hired to come back and take apart the encampment or just from normal decay. It is simply amazing how much information has been uncovered by the few things from the past that still remain, however they are the key to understanding what really happened here in Valley Forge. Another possible hut is being excavated as we speak and the camp kitchen awaits completion. Stay tuned!

Week Two - Scott Striar

“… you come to field school expecting to go to class and you wind up with eleven best friends..."

--Paul Pluta

The first two weeks of Temple’s field school on the grounds of Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge Park have been an informative excursion from the classroom setting. Both Carin and Jesse have not only fostered knowledge in archaeological fieldwork but have given us a holistic understanding of the park, its history and the surrounding area. Our first week centered around both getting to know one another and getting to know Valley Forge. Both of these tasks were easy and the class has gotten a multi-dimensional understanding of the park. Through readings, tours of the park and landmarks (given by both Carin and Jesse, as well as the parks historical architect) and an extensive exploration of the site as well as the sites near surroundings, each member of the class can now give a thorough explanation of the concepts surrounding the dig as well as answer many other questions that might arise from visitors to the site.

Excavation has been the focus of the second week at field school. The class has learned a variety of skills essential to excavation. We have learned how to lay in units, proper methods for shoveling and toweling, understanding to level the units and how to build walls. Carin and Jess ehave looked over our shoulders and helped us spot certain items on the screen and features in the units. The brutality of the heat has been subsided a little by the shade of the woods so everyone is alert, friendly, and eager to work. So far we have laid in three new units and have begun to explore them. These excavated units have yielded many artifacts and a few features adding to the growing knowledge about the mysterious group of soldiers encamped in the woods on the grounds of the Washington Memorial Chapel.

Week Two - Paul Pluta

This week our field school began our part in the ongoing excavations at Valley Forge’s Washington Memorial Chapel, where we are seeking new information on the Continental Army’s stay during the American Revolution. The past five days have been our class’s first collective experience of archaeology’s physical application in the field. Thus, our fearless leaders, Carin and Jesse, have begun to impart upon us their wisdom and knowledge of the techniques, theories, and intellectual potential of the discipline.

We have learned many of the skills necessary to partake in a scientifically sound investigation of the material remnants of the past. By learning to lay out grids and take elevation measurements our group has been introduced to the use of spatial organization of the site for greater contextual understanding of the remains. We have learned proper excavation techniques that allow us to uncover materials and information in a systematic manner that will prove useful in site description and interpretation. As we have explored the soils and made finds we have learned much about the recognition and identification of the artifacts and features left behind by previous human inhabitation and activity. Most importantly, we have been given instruction on record keeping and data organization, so that all the information gained from the site can be preserved and utilized for a greater understanding of our research subject.

Over the past week we have also learned some things that can’t be understood through pedagogical processes. My fellow students and I have all participated in the discovery of things left behind by the soldiers who fought for American independence. We now know the joy and excitement of finding things touched, created, or used hundreds of years ago by people we have previously only read about in history books. The site has yielded charcoal, bone, nails and other metal objects, shards of ceramic wares, pieces of glass, a lead musket ball, and a fancy ceramic and metal button. We have also found human altered lithic fragments that indicate the production of stone tools in the area, potentially by natives that lived here long before Washington’s Army. These discoveries have showed us both what archaeology can provide us intellectually as well as the romance of uncovering the material culture lost by the people of the past. Thus far our class has not just been enlightening, but immensely enjoyable as well.

As we learn about the archaeological process our anticipation of future finds fuels our excitement and inspires our efforts to find out more about both archaeology and the people it tells us about. Our first taste of the soils trod upon by the heroes of the Continental Army during the famous winter of 1777 has left us with an insatiable hunger for more.