Pit 112: Level 3

Completed December 5, 2020 by Josephine Bachman, Jocelyn and DC Locke, Odess and David Brinkman. Artifact counts continue to rise as we went into level three. A small musket shot was found and also a number of Native American pottery pieces. As we leveled off the bottom, a large iron piece was excavated, which would later be selected for our first electrolysis test. The electrolysis was a success, and the removal of rust showed the item to appear as a door hinge but with a dimple in the middle (between two typical hinge holes.) In our Granby dig, it sometimes takes years to figure out what an artifact is, so the final verdict is still out on this "hinge" item. As we leveled-off the pit (at our usual 50cm depth), we started to find lots of charcoal and brick pieces on the east side of the pit, which is where we were expecting to find the gas line trench. We continued digging on this east half of the pit and continued to find artifacts. We ended up going almost twice the depth (90cm) until artifacts stopped. Could this be the trench, and was it cut in a V-shape, allowing artifacts to drop deeper. We will need to continue to figure out what is going on there. For Pit 112 ended up with 434 artifacts, which is way above our average of 170. Charcoal pieces accounted for most of the artifacts, so the overall power rating (a measurement of artifact counts and diversity) has pit 112 ranked at 31 out of the 112 pits. That's pretty good but not nearly as good as the adjacent pit 60, which is ranked #2. So, a big question is, are we losing artifacts to the gas line trench?

Pit 112: Level 3 produced: 31 pieces of pottery, 48 glass, 16 nails, .28 cal musket ball, three pipe bowl, one piece of silver, 20 iron including a door hinge, 229 charcoal, 11 Native American pottery.

Above, carefully excavated (for possible carbon dating) charcoal. Below: Seeds that were found within the charcoal fragments.

Below: Excavation of the iron (maybe a door hinge) item.

Below: Was our possible hinge a part of the hinge found in pit 50? Was the wine glass bottom (from level 2) part of the wine glass found also in level 50?

Below: Documented artifacts (like from Colonial Williamsburg) are helpful in our identification of Granby artifacts.

Above and Below: DC digging deep into the east half of the pit. Is this the outer edge of the gas line trence?