Update - Artifact Showcase

Over the last ten weeks, the field school has recovered thousands of distinct pieces of evidence concerning the occupation periods of the Arcadia Mill Village. Some of them have been featured in previous blog posts, but there are quite a few that deserve mentioning now that we have completed excavation and are preparing for a transition from recovery to conservation and analysis.

This iron, depicted in situ, or in place, was missing its handle. It is possible that we have actually recovered it during the summer's excavations, but since iron artifacts are often almost unrecognizable because of oxidation pre-conservation, it will take a while for us to find it!


We have found several fragments of tableware at Area A. These sorts of finds can "cross-mend" in a fashion similar to ceramics. Individuals of low socioeconomic status would buy their tableware piecemeal as they could afford it, and plantation slaves sometimes received hand-me-downs, so it is unlikely that there is a complete set of silverware out there at Area A. This can make a cross-mend more valuable for tying distinct contexts together through association, because of the greater variety of decorative traditions.

This bottle, as you can see in the wall of one of our units and the scaled image to the left, has a sizeable "kick," which is the convex indentation in the bottom of wine bottles left over from the manufacturing process. Wine bottles change in shape over time as styles of manufacture change, which can provide a source of relative dates on a site.

It was exciting to find evidence of activities at Area A. This frog gig is aptly named for its use in hunting small reptiles and amphibians. Counter-intuitively, people of low socioeconomic status in the past tended to have a more diverse diet than wealthy individuals, which often resulted in better nutrition for them in the long run!



Faunal remains can give special insight into the diet of historical actors. Earlier, I mentioned the lack of faunal remains in many of our test units. Local soil conditions are sandy, with a high level of acidity. This causes organic material to decay quickly in the absence of something in the soil to neutralize it. Lime from mortar used to hold bricks together is a base, which explains the presence of these teeth in a feature that was notable for its brick and mortar concentration.

It is important for an archaeologist to decide the size of screen to use on an excavation, because small artifacts like this clothing hook can slip through a 1/4" screen unnoticed during sifting. For this reason, we switch to the smaller 1/8" screen when we encounter features.



This piece of white-ware has what is known as a transfer print, a method of imprinting complex and detailed shapes onto the surface of a ceramic dish, cup, or other implement cheaply and quickly. These sorts of ceramic wares were intended for mass-market consumption.

Student Highlight - Lauren Bell

Lauren Bell is a Junior anthropology major at the University of West Florida. Her specialization is biological anthropology, but she wanted to expand her interests to terrestrial work this year. She plans to apply for UWF's forensic anthropology field school next summer. Her study interests include human origins and evolutionary theory, and has looked forward to working outside in the woods.

Student Highlight - Matt Giesecke

Matt Giesecke is a senior from Tallahassee, Florida. He is a maritime archaeology major, but he wanted to get some terrestrial experience at Arcadia this year. His favorite activities are scuba diving and swimming, and he has always enjoyed living near the water. His future plans include applying to UWF for graduate school.

Update - Maritime Mapping

Welcome to the final week of the 2011 Arcadia field season! Many thanks are due to everyone who contributed their valuable time and energy to helping us understand the nature of the antebellum community at Arcadia Mill. The field school finished this season's final test unit excavation at the end of last Friday, and we are now going through the process of back-filling, performing maintenance on our equipment, and preparing the artifacts that we have recovered for the lab component of our project.

Our maritime survey has been an outstanding success. Thanks to their work, we now have the entire extent of Pond Creek within the boundaries of the property mapped, along with associated features like cut timbers, cut shorelines, vertical pilings, and sandstone scatters. The hand-drawn maps from this work have already been geo-referenced and digitally integrated into our Geographic Information System for analysis. We've also been able to do some geophysical work in the creek with the underwater magnetometer.

Maritime mapping techniques are a little different than what terrestrial archaeologists are used to. Since it is not efficient to section out a grid in such a large area as a creek bed, our divers have established what are called baselines. At Arcadia, these baselines have a starting and ending point known by their UTM coordinates. The crew was then able to measure the distance and angle from their baseline to the feature that they wanted to map. Once integrated into our GIS, the architectural features can be easily compared to the vector data that we already have such as topographic contours, US Geological Survey soil composition, areal photographs, and historic maps.

The maritime component has also been able to take some underwater photographs of features associated with the mill this summer. Thanks to the recent dry weather conditions, the creek was clear of the brown tannin from local oak trees that would obscure visibility. Moreover, the actual water level of the creek has been low enough to make for good lighting conditions.

This image depicts part of a circular brick concentration near a square-cut channel in the creek's bank. This could very well be the location of the bridge because of the earthworks that had been done to allow for easy access to the water.





Thanks to the action of the flow of water over the years, the creek bed is littered with sandstone scatters like these. While some were probably intended to help channel the flow of water, it is possible that some were also used to create a stable foundation to build structures upon.




The maritime component of our field school was always on the lookout for squared timbers. To the left you can see a cut board with a cut circular hole. Mortis and Tenon construction was a popular alternative to relying on expensive nails for holding structures together. The image to the right is vertical piling that might have been for a bridge or wooden support structure.

This video should give you an excellent impression of what it was like as a diver during the survey. As you can see, identifying cultural features and telling them apart from the natural character of the creek bed can be quite a challenge!

Update - Completing the Square / Underwater Features

We were excited to discover what we think is the fourth corner of one of our proposed structures at Area A. Wherever an archaeologist works, it is important to know the sorts of things to look for in the ground so that he or she knows an architectural feature when she sees it. The footprint of any given structure is dependent on the region where the remains are found, so understanding local building traditions and soil composition are imperatives before digging begins so that we know what to look for. In soft sandy soil like at Arcadia, even housing associated with individuals of low socioeconomic status needed to have piers or supports that wouldn't rot when exposed to the comparatively high acidity of sandy soil. While ironstone has survived underground relatively intact over the years, the brick tends to get crushed under the pressure and root action, leaving the fragments behind in a tightly packed cluster. We've been careful to leave eposed bricks in situ until we could verify whether or not they are from a scatter or are in fact a destroyed pier.



Finding and identifying architectural features can sometimes lead to frustrating false alarms. One of our other units found a dark stain in the ground that appeared to be a posthole at first, but as they began excavating it separately, they saw that they had actually found a rodent burrow. These anomalies are nevertheless documented in case their presence could explain some of other part of what we are seeing in any given provenience.

Our field school's maritime component has been hard at work every day mapping Pond Creek and associated mill features. They have found sunken timbers, pieces of ironstone supports, and even square-cut channels in the side of the bank that suggest the presence of roads and bridges. They have also mapped the opening in the dam through which water traveled on its way to the textile mill via the "head-race," a part of a mill that carried the water from where it was being stored to where its kinetic energy would be best used to operate milling equipment. Since the water's strength comes from its height rather than the speed of the flow itself, it was only necessary to cut channels that descended a few inches every hundred feet. Because of the soft soil conditions in the area, wooden and ironstone linings and supports remain in the ground from where they were used to help protect the earthworks from erosion. Stay tuned for detailed underwater photographs and maps as they come in!