Ladies and gentlemen:
I apologise for my long absence in posting. We’ve been working hard and I just haven’t been finding enough hours in the day! But I fully intend to reform, and re-commit to the reliable updating of yesterweek.
Today we worked on trying to clarify the possible structure we’ve been seeing in our test pit. We’re still finding a great deal of artefacts: musket balls, pieces of pipe, ceramic, nails, buttons, buckles, and more. We’re definitely digging where a great deal of garbage was dumped in the late 18th century.
I’m holding out hope that this dumping area is not just any old midden, but was the cellar of an Acadian house, which the Planters dumped their garbage into. We’re seeing a number of larger stones, but no clarification just yet, and nothing to definitely associate the feature with an Acadian presence.
We’re still finding loads and loads of animal bones, and upon acknowledging the futility of bagging it ALL up for future analysis, we made a large pile of bones, conveying, really:
Abandon all hope, ye domesticated animals who enter here.
Our horrifying pile of bones!
Once again, we are fighting the challenges of having 1500-pound bovine friends. Morty, whom I like to call Mortimer, is a particularly friendly cow, who particularly enjoys licking mud and dirt off of our clothes, pants, boots, buckets, trowels, etc. This sounds adorable, if you’ve never experienced having cow slobber all over all of your worldly possessions. Still, as long as Mortimer refrains from eating my artefacts, and keeps responding to this horrible name I’ve given her, I’ll remain proud to call her my friend.
Mortimer and Cow 2 really want to help/eat our backfill.
Cow 2 and Cate and Donna stare each other down.
In a nice surprise, a passing busload of seniors from Windsor, Nova Scotia, stopped by when they saw we were digging, and Cate and I had a great time hopping aboard the bus and talking about archaeology in the area. Since we are on private land at present, we don’t encourage visitors but it’s always nice to talk to motorists/passengers who are happening by.
That’s all for now!
Christina
