Pit 100: Level 3

Completed November 12, 2016 by Alicia Ballagh, Jerry Bright, Jocelyn and DC Locke, Odess and David Brinkman, Teresa Mitchell, Steven Rougeau, Dean Hunt and Riverland Park neighbor Seth. As expected from adjacent pits, level 3 produced more than levels 1 and 2 together. Another pipe stem and 2 pipe bowl pieces were found as well as large numbers of glass, nails, brick, and Native American pottery. Graphing the results seems to show that we are at the north-west corner of the Granby house. The Native American finds would be pre-Granby and probably from the Thomas Brown site. Overall, pit 100 almost reached 200 artifacts with 29 pieces of pottery, 85 pieces of glass, 26 nails, 17 Native American pottery pieces, 12 charcoal pieces, and 14 iron pieces. Neighbor Seth did a great job leveling off level 3 and was excited about helping out in the future. We did not expect the Granby dig to really go this far. The evidence is more than sufficient to prove the Granby and Brown sites. Last year, the decision was made to file the official SCIAA (South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology) archaeological site report for the Granby dig when we reached pit 100. This will mostly mean converting the current information on the web site to a printable (PDF) format. As far as the artifacts go, it may also mean an additional phase to identify and count the different pottery types as well as re-visit "mystery" items that had not been identified. Another possible step would be to have carbon dating performed on charcoal samples which we believe came from the Thomas Brown period. Finding a permanent home for the Granby artifacts and building a museum display is also future work. I see all of these tasks taking the majority of our time over the next year. We have, however, committed dig opportunities to several other groups. The statistics continue to show that our average artifacts per pit is still rising so the dig will continue into next year.

Pit 100: Level 3 produced: 17 pieces of pottery, 54 pieces of glass, 14 nails, 13 Native American pieces, 12 charcoal pieces, 1 pipe stem and 2 pipe bowl pieces.





Below: The artifact per pit numbers (and trend) show a continued increase after 100 pits. This can be largely contributed to the fact that we have gotten better at excavating charcoal fragments which count as artifacts.



Below: The artifact power rating (APR), however, has been dropping since around pit 65. The APR is a measure of, not just artifact counts, but also a wide range of artifact categories. The top pits had high artifact numbers in many different categories. No single pit has had artifacts in all 13 categories but a couple pits have had 12 out of 13 category artifacts. Based on the trend (at 100 pits), the Granby dig could continue producing good results for, at least, 25 more pits.



Below: Shane and Seth helping in Pit 100.