Another great day in the field! We were dodging rain storms all day, but still got quite a bit done. Some of the mysteries from yesterday are becoming clearer, and some new mysteries appeared. Some finds today included 18th and 19th century ceramics, fragments from Native American-toolmaking, a Chinese coin, button pieces, a spoon. And a mystery coin.... Here is a narrative from one of our fieldstaff, Kristen:"The Magruder House is a really exciting project because it is a piece of history nestled in the busy urban bustle of modern Bladensburg, Md. Today I’m working with Mike on TU 4, which is located on the east side of the house. Today we’ve uncovered two features- probably a modern walkway comprised of two parallel lines of smallish quartzite stones that appear to form a sort of walkway, with smoothed gravels as the footpath, and a large, dark stain in the southeast corner of the unit. Only nails, both wire and square, and some window glass is being found in the stain. We have found some really exciting historic artifacts outside of the stain, including a pipe bowl and stem, and a silver (copper?) coin about the size of a quarter. The coin features a woman sitting, with some letters around the outside, “ORGIVS.” The coin, and those found in other units today, are going to be taken to a conservator who will hopefully be able to clean them and preserve them to the point that we can identify them as diagnostic artifacts."
And some pictures from the day: Julie and Nichole digging test units, a spoon from Test Unit 3, the crew huddled under the shelter in a rain storm, Susan troweling out Unit 3.
This weekend we'll post some bios of our crew and some old and new images of the Magruder House.
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