Pit 116: Level 3
Completed January 25, 2020, by DC Locke and David Brinkman. After doing most of the work in level two, Odess took a break and was replaced by DC. Surprisingly, the kitchen pottery pieces really increased in level three while the glass and nail numbers dropped. But, of the only five nails we found, one of them turned out to be a milestone for the dig. DC's Rose-Head nail find was the dig's 20,000th artifact. It was probably also the best Rose-Head nail we have found in the dig. After cleaning, a very large burned brick fragment showed a rust stain which could have been from being in contact with a man-made iron object. Could this burned brick have been part of a fireplace where an iron rack was mounted to hold pots? Overall, Pit 116 had a surprising number of artifacts for this area. The pit ended with unidentified archaeological features that went well below our normal 50cm depth. Even at that depth, however, we were still hitting a lot of Magnolia tree roots. There are a lot of things to be found here, but the roots make it very difficult work.
Pit 116: Level 3 produced: 41 pottery pieces, 6 glass, 5 nails, eight Native American pottery, 50 charcoal, and one iron.
