It is the end of week three and the hottest day we have spent out in the field yet. Today we had our weekly unit tour and show and tell to hear about the new discoveries in every ones' areas of the site.

The bakery area shows a lot of promise for a hearth with evidence of ash and a brick floor located next to what is believed to be the bakery wall. This is distinguished by a color change in the soil from light chalk and dirt to a bright red brick colored area. Also found in this area was a piece of metal that would have been a musket ball. This is evidence to show that the French were possibly making ammunition in this area and/or melting down imperfect pieces of lead to reuse. The partially melted piece of lead that was found was encased in a layer of chalk.

In the barracks area there are now four units open, all very different from one another. The first unit is mostly on the earthworks made by the Spanish and contains a large amount of solid chalk. The chalk seems to have been placed there, and there might be soil underneath. There has been pottery, bone, and nails found in this unit. The second unit is just off of the earthworks and has had an abundance of artifacts within it including: forty or more nails, large amounts of animal bone, flint, pottery, charcoal, brick bits, glass, a red bead, and faience. Most of this seems to be undisturbed, most likely because of its placement by the earthworks. The third unit is puzzling and is filled with reddish clay earth… to be continued. The last unit is supposed to be behind the barracks and has yielded a small white bead, a piece of engraved Choctaw pottery, and some bone. 

- Little Foot

Day XIV

Dig day number fourteen was extremley hot. But, everyone is back in the field after various bouts with allergies, sore throat, eye infections, ear infections, and heat rashes. We even had two more volunteers help out for the day, Natalie's family came to visit, and Brian prepped the site for community day.

Jordan and Lauren finishing up a unit at the wall area.

The Mooneys.

Brian mowing inside of the fort.

The survey crew finished their mapping of the southern earthwork of Fort Confederation and barracks; they plotted nearly 600 points across the terrain using the survey station which will result in a great topographic map. In addition, Jordan and Lauren finished excavating unit 47 at the wall area, revealing (mostly) a huge tree root.

Surveying... and tree climbing. Actually, Boone is bending the tree back so that the survey machine (left) can locate the prism (right).

Unit 47.

Personally, I continued to excavate unit 201. I went a little crazy and breached into layer B by removing too much soil while hacking away a giant piece of chalk that began in layer A. It was a good reminder that going slow is usually the best choice and, when peeling back layers of dirt, to be weary of soil changes in texture, color, etc. However, it wasn't a big deal and I was able to finish the first two layers of unit 201 just as the day was ending. I have to say, as nerdy as it sounds, I'm looking foward to drawing a profile wall if I finish this unit before the field school ends.

Layer A.

Layer B.

Profile view of unit 201 layer B.

Lastly, finds of the day are multiple pieces of Choctaw pottery with recatlinear engravings, and a deer's lower jawbone with teeth still in it. Eleanor found her pottery piece a few meters directly south from my unit, and Rattlesnake Ron and Brian found their piece in their unit from the 2012 season as they we're cleaning it up. Littlefoot, in addition to her forty-plus nails, excavated the eerie looking jawbone and teeth one meter to the south of my unit.

Eleanor's Choctaw pottery.

Captain Rattlesnake's Choctaw pottery.

- Light Horse

Back in Business at Fort Tombecbe

Bonjour mes amis!

I, your ever faithful blogger Natalie Mooney, am back. After a vicious fight against my varied illnesses and quarantine, I must say Fort Tombecbe was a site for sore eyes. I, however, did not do any digging today, which only slightly worries me because of my race to find the fabled fish hook before Brian Mast.

I shall find it.

Instead, Team Bakery turned into Team TRTS. (Topographical Roll Tide Surveyors). In case you don't know (even if you do I'm still going to explain) we use a ridiculously expensive (for a college student at least) piece of machinery that allows us to plot points that will later be used to create a topographic map of the entire fort. The machine is fairly simple, to plot a point there are five steps. 

One: Level the machine. For some (Team Palisade) this is a difficult step. For others it's a quick five minute set-up. 

Two: Use the computer to select a job. It really is as simple as it sounds. The little computer is a hand held device that has a touch screen.

Three: Select the point that the machine is at. This is extremely important because if the machine doesn't know where it is, then the following points will make no sense at all.

Four: Select a Backsite point. Think of the last two steps like the points on a drawing compass. You place one at the center and then you put the pencil down at that first point. That first point is the backsite. Usually it is a previously inputted point. This point also helps the machine relate every other point that we input. Overall a very important step.

Five: Start plotting. This is done by using a rod that has a reflector at the top; the machine will shoot out a laser (invisible to us unfortunately) that will reflect it back letting us know where that point is. This is simply a laser form of echolocation. Like bats and dolphins! So basically you press the shot button and BAM you're done with that point!

We did that for most of the day. But the fun stuff happened with those who dug. Tori upped her nail count to up to 35 plus (she stopped counting) and she started finding bones underneath all of the nails. Then Lighthorse Lee found the most impressive find of Fort Tombecbe, (in my opinion!) he found a piece of cloth.

The Shroud of  Tombecbe

I  know, I know it may not look like much, but this piece of cloth could have lasted almost 300 years! This is absolutely remarkable because textiles almost never last in climates like ours. It was absolutely awesome. No one quite believed it at first, but just. Wow. So much awesome. (Let's just say it left everyone in awestruck wonder)

Another exciting aspect of today was that we had visitors! The esteemed guests were Ian Brown, Ph.D from the University of Alabama and Greg Waselkov, Ph.D from the University of South Alabama.  

Fort Tombecbe is glad you visited the site and we hope to see you again!

On the last note of what happened today, Ron and Brian finally opened up their barracks site, which was previously dug in the last field school, but not finished. I have to get working on my little unit if I want to find that fish hook first! 

Captain Ron with Drs. Brown and Waselkov

Looking forward to being back in the dirt,

This is Natalie Mooney signing off.

Surveying, Tumbling, and Really Old Bugs!

The plague is upon us! Last week poor Elle was miserable with pink eye and a cold. Today Natalie was diagnosed with an ear infection. Hopefully they will both be back to 100% by the end of the week and the Fort Tombecbe crew will be together in the field. We certainly missed our team members during their respective sick days.

                Boone, BJ, and I took our turn surveying and working with the mapping station – completely cool. We continued the work started by Team Palisade at the beginning of week 2 by locating several more points in the barracks area.  As it turns out BJ is a numbers genius and Boone has a natural ability to hold completely still, which is necessary for accuracy, and as I have said in a previous post, accuracy is KING. This turned out to be a difficult task for me. Periodically my dyslexia gets the better of me and numbers and graph coordinates fail to make logical sense. In addition to being somewhat baffled by numbers and words, I managed to trip over an unidentified object (it may have been my own feet) and went feet over head in a rather comical trip and fall. Laurel and Hardy could not have done better, neither could Gerald Ford. Fortunately tomorrow Team Bakery is continuing survey work and I will have a chance to redeem myself (and hopefully manage to remain upright all day).

                The new Team Barracks continued work and turned up an impressive amount of artifacts. Tori’s excavation efforts revealed 26 nails, 19 of which are complete. To be defined as complete, the nail must have both the head and shaft still connected. She is using a system called piece plotting which attempts to place the location of the find within the graphic drawing of the unit. This method allows archaeologists to study the distribution of artifacts within a unit. In this case the nails occurred in a straight(ish) pattern which could possibly indicate a wall. Additional evidence that there may have been a wall in this area is the discovery of 300 year old Mud Dauber nests.  These nests had been attached to the barracks wall and still had the impression of the wood on them. It is both creepy and delightful to ponder the discovery of an almost 300 year old bug den.

The rest of my day was fairly uneventful (certainly less so than my spectacular tumble in the morning) and we returned home to discover that Rosa put together pizza fixings for dinner with frosted brownies for dessert. I genuinely love this site, but Rosa’s kitchen magic is by far the thing I look most forward to in the evenings. This mom is going to cry when I have to go home and cook again. 

Week 3 Day 1: The Barracks & Ghosts

Today Team Palisade worked on our units in the barracks area. My unit is a bit removed from Light Horse’s (Lee) and Little Foot’s (Tori) units. Mine is situated behind where the barracks stood. The picture below features Light Horse and Little Foot, and my unit is far to the right (outside the picture). If I take three steps south of my unit, I’ll be in the ravine!

 

It’ll be interesting to see what I uncover because this area was hidden from sight from the other areas of the fort. As of today, I have excavated a few centimeters down and found some bones. The bones in one area of my unit were a little bit longer than the length of my palm, and these might possibly be bird bones. The other bones that I found were somewhat flexible and could possibly be fish bones. All of these bones were found lying sideways, indicating that they have not been disturbed since they were thrown there. Further down, I found a few bits of orange brick as well.

My Unit Behind the Barracks

  

In case you were curious as to what the string is for, I’ll tell you. It helps maintain the boundaries of the unit as you excavate deeper. To create a clean wall, one has to dig directly above the side and down in to the unit.

 

This evening, Tina Jones gave us a tour and history of downtown Livingston and the campus. We first stopped at the Bored Well, which is a historic well and is located next to the courthouse. Light Horse, Napoleon (BJ) and Boone decided to taste the water of the well:

 

 This house is one of the oldest in Livingston. People have witnessed a female presence here in this house. In one of the reports, each night a little boy would see a lady rocking next to his bed.

After touring downtown Livingston and hearing the legend of Stephen Renfroe, a sheriff turned outlaw, we made our way to campus. We saw Webb Hall, which used to be a female dorm, and people have heard the shuffling of footsteps. Out of a corner of their eyes, others see a the edge of a skirt going around a corner.

 So, overall it was a pretty quiet (even a little spooky) Monday! There wasn’t too much mangling going on at the site. I have been fighting my urges to battle with nature. I even tried to save a few centipedes!

- Elle the Mangler (I don’t think this title is going away anytime soon!)

(Friday May 30th)

After a few setbacks from the rain we continued on with our work on our prospective units. We are now working on the other side of the gully where the French barracks used to be. The back side of the barracks would have faced the drop off that is very steep and falls to a creek below; the front would have faced the interior of the fort. Now we hope to find whatever remains were left behind by the soldiers that resided there. Items could have been dropped behind the barracks while on leisurely time or through the floor boards of the barracks themselves. The building would have stood on cedar piers making it easy for belonging to be lost under the floor. After the French (1736-1763) and English (1763-1768) had long gone, the Spanish (1794-1797) built earthworks and in doing so moved a lot of the material from the barracks. This created a mix of artifacts from the French and Spanish, making it hard to date. One of the units we opened is partially on one of these earthworks and some pottery has been unearthed. The artifacts found in this unit might be harder to date and figure out a story for but they are still valuable because we can determine where it came from based on its appearance (meaning the glaze and decoration on pottery can determine French or Spanish made).

            I recently opened a new unit in the barracks area and there are a few steps before you can begin digging. One of these is using a Munsell chart to determine the color of the soil you are working in. First you take a sample of the soil with your trowel and slip it under/behind the chart and then using your best judgment determine which color matches. Some people dampen the soil to get a better idea of its true color.

            We gave one another tours of our units because it was Friday and we wanted to review everyone's progress over the week. Team Bakery had discovered some pieces of metal on what appears to be the wall of the bakery. Also by the bakery wall there is a darker area of earth that was probably under the bakery. The bakery was probably raised on piers like the barracks, creating space for objects to fall between the floor boards. There is a distinct layer of rubble that is from working on the bakery and then its destruction. On the other side of the bakery wall a nice profile wall has been made that tells a great story for the bakery showing all the layers of construction and destruction as well as clusters of nails, fired brick, and mortar. It will be exciting to see what else turns up on this part of the site.

In the barracks area we are just beginning but a piece of pottery was found and a small piece of animal bone.

P.S. we discovered that snickers look like profile walls! :) 

- Little Foot

Day IX

The ninth day in the field was wet. After leaving the field early yesterday due to heavy rain, when we arrived at the site it looked pretty much how we expected...

Bakery area.

Part of the palisade wall area.

The palisade wall trench uncovered.

After bailing the water off of the tarps and out of the units, it turned out to be a rather productive day. Three units (including mine!) were photographed and their paperwork finished, at least ten buckets were water-screened, and Eleanor, Tori, and I began to excavate the barracks; but not before driving ourselves crazy laying out the remaining flags. After surveying the barracks area the past few days, we were left with a few gaps in the flags that serve as a grid for the units. We filled those gaps in using the Pythagorean theorem ("a" squared plus "b" squared equals "c" squared); from two known points we measured out the diagonal side of a right triangle to accurately place a flag on the other side of an imaginary trench running through the earthworks of Fort Confederation.

Breaking ground at the barracks!

 After prepping the new unit with the rake, clippers, and trowel, I dug into the old Fort Confederation earthworks. I only had to remove barely an inch out of the northeast quadrant to uncover a seven centimeter long, trapezoid shaped piece of lead glazed earthenware that is a glossy reddish-brown. We expect to find a lot of artifacts in this area in the upcoming days because the soldiers lived in this spot during the French occupation of the site and the units that cut into the earthworks contain, possibly, material that was scraped up from the surronding areas during their constuction post-Fort Tombecbe.

Can't wait to get back out there tomorrow!

 - Light Horse