One look at my awesomely humble accommodations upon my arrival was a reminder that this wasn't the usual work trip I was used to.
My plane landed in Richmond, where I spent the day realizing my knowledge of the civil war was pretty pathetic and embarrassing, as I visited Tredager Ironworks and then made my way easily up the highway through the former Capitol of the confederacy battlefield by battlefield, including the former Chimborazo civil war hospital. I picked up the book "A Southern Woman's Story" by Phoebe Yates Pember, a first-hand account from the head matron of that hospital. Because my accommodations had no Internet, it was an easy book to get through during my week's stay.
I explored Cold Harbor battlefield. The worst loss of union lives occurred here as the confederates defended Richmond by strategically digging these trenches below (and they remain, amazingly!), thus taking out 16,000 or so union soldiers over a period of 2 weeks (the first 5,000 in the first hour of battle alone!). It's Known that Grant regretted this particular one. I walked the paths through the woods alone where these battles occurred and that was...errr...spooky.
Look closely below and you'll see the trenches...
Imagine the grey coats lined up here, hunkered down and taking the blues by surprise. Pretty awful conditions too.
Hiding behind this trench gave the confederates a good view of the open fields of the exposed Federalists.
After the hikes and visits, I drove on to Montpelier. I was housed with other expeditioners and interns at the Arlington House on the sprawling BEAUTIFUL property. No words can describe, but the 1.5 hr drive over was of long, lush, rolling greenery with beautiful old houses drenched in history.
Arlington house was a former slave overseer's home and then used much later as a recovery house for PTSD WWI soldiers. Behind the house was a barn and former field slave quarters.
An old mower blade sharpener stored inside the old slave quarters.
And this, my bedroom in the basement, called the "Fireside" room because it used to be a kitchen. The fireplace was bricked over but if you look closely you can see the former arching outline of it. That was my bed on the left, and I was all alone in this room, and yes it was spooky.
This was an 8 bedroom house full of year round interns and expeditioners, and there were appropriate layers of orange Virginia dust everywhere. The folks here live with the dirt. Sweet.
After an introductory dinner and good night's sleep, we were off to lectures and tours and finally the excavation site: a former field slave quarters and its surrounding area.
This is called a "unit" and it's about 5' x 5' square where we might expect to find artifacts, based on information obtained from surface surveys previously. They'd been excavating all summer here, and we were the final week to dig this site before refilling and moving to another location on the property.
Time to get started by first de-sodding! I was given my very own trowel (still didn't even know how to use it) and was paired with Aryel, a super awesome intern. We began with this, St Augustine special :) and no time was wasted on getting dirty!
As we removed the sod, our first discovery! A BUCKET HANDLE!
With a grimace, Aryel explained this was left from last year's expedition, and it was not cool that it was accidentally left here. So we kept troweling the top layer like this:
And that was what we did for the remaining 4 days. Lower and lower we scraped into layers (not digged!). We'd place the dirt into buckets where we'd screen for smaller missed artifacts, and take pictures of the unit with each layer.
First upon screening We found some burnt clay, probably from a fireplace or hearth structure.
During the dig, one of the expeditioners proposed to his girlfriend by placing her ring into a geode, and burying it in their unit so that she found it. We heard her shout she'd found a huge rock! And she said yes through tears of orange mud :)
We wrapped that first day with a tour of the grounds. And I was given the following book to read to make me an official archaeologist:
Madison's "temple" that really was used to cover an ice house.
Outlined structures of house slave quarters on the south lawn of the mansion itself.
Slave cemetery.
Day 2 of excavation uncovered last year's STP (shovel test pit) that was dug to see if this was a worthy spot to excavate. Our goal then was to dig down to the bottom to find the Agar bore (a sample scoop) which would signify we were deep enough.
Success! And measurements:
And more tours!
The Gilmore cabin, the only preserved emancipated slave's home in existence (I've read). Built by the freed Gilmore family upon emancipation from Montpelier's enslaved community.
And the Gilmore cemetery, headstones marked with iron angle from their beds (again another spooky hike alone!)...in the woods...for the sake of exploration!
Next day, it had rained overnight. So this is what you do to remove water from the protective tarp:
Scraping a little deeper in the unit, my first find! A tiny piece of ceramic! Refined earthenware. How these got there it's not clear. Maybe a hand-me-down from the Madison's or who really knows. Archaeologists take pieces like this and see if they can ultimately create a story-a depiction for visitors or Montpelier of what life was like for the nation's 8th president.
We document that stuff, yo!
And more digging reveals:
Old nails
More ceramic pieces
Unwelcome visitors!
Possible wagon ruts and stone from an old road (this one is not my unit but way cool!).
A pipe stem (smokers!)
Burnt clay, animal bones, ceramic, nails...en masse.
Eric discovered an old plow blade in his unit.
Tour of the big mansion itself.
And of the Madison cemetery:
And our last day ended with a full day in the lab processing artifacts:
Electrolysis knocks the rust off of iron.
A great week of learning and fun (and a little soreness ;) ). And in the end I'm reminded of this:
Amen!
