Fort Mifflin Archaeology Update

This October was stunning in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The sun was out. The foliage was better than I ever remember seeing. The nights are cool, but once the sun comes it feels as if God is smiling on all of us. Digging at Fort Mifflin on Fridays has been the perfect excuse to be outside. 

I returned for two more Fridays and will go back this Friday to wrap up the project. The public portion of the dig is over until March, but I've proven myself solid enough to be invited back to wash artifacts, fill in the holes, and do whatever else is needed in order to put the site to rest.

In four weeks we have dug past the 20th century reenactment bullets and landed in the War of 1812 by way of some buttons. As we are on the banks of the Delaware River, we are reaching the water table long before we will ever reach bedrock. Our first job on day one was to bail out Test Unit (TU) 1. That unit proved too muddy to continue.

Within moments of digging on my first day, archaeology buddy Dan discovered a brick. Then another one. Then another. It seemed to be forming a border, or what archaeologists call a feature. Two weeks later the unit had been expanded into a partial unit (#6) to see how the bricks expanded. 

A week later (week four) the feature was thoroughly examined and they started to dig below it. Slow progress, but hard to move faster with a varied volunteer team. Other TUs went deeper in the same time.

After much studying the conclusion is the rectangular spot was not a small garden or an outhouse, but the place where a cannon stood as decoration in the 1970s and 1980s. The same cannon is now inside the wall closer to the buildings, atop a new brick platform. A place that is easier for visitors to access. I wonder if this is the cannon we heard being demonstrated on our first week, or if they use a different cannon for that.

The more dig sites I go to, the more varied my experiences. Newlin Grist Mill is mostly rocks. Fort Mifflin is mostly mud. The mud is hauled on a cart to barnlike structure where it can dry out overnight, or over the week. It doesn't look like much, but treasures including those buttons have been found.

The Friday volunteers are mostly recently college graduates who studied archaeology, leaving me as one of the old people along with the leaders. They are hard workers who stay past 4:30 and love every minute of the mess. I've heard the Saturday volunteers are mostly people without experience in archaeology. I'm learning to admit I can't lift buckets as heavy as the young 'uns, and that's okay. I can divide full buckets into two half buckets and move quicker. 

The planes still look close enough to touch. I wonder if anyone is looking out their window and seeing us digging in the dark and wondering what is going on. Likely, though, they are landing too quickly on the other side of the fence to give us more than a passing glance.

I'll be back on Friday!