Pit 135: Level 3

Completed on December 3, 2021, by Josephine Bachman, Kim Masters, DC Locke, Odess and David Brinkman. Level three gave us a new stoneware type that we have not seen before. It is orange with a pink stripe. It could be Native American. Pit 135 ended with a funny find. Back eight years ago, pit #50 gave us over 300 artifacts and, after 85 more pits, it is still holding the #2 ranking among the best pits. After we finished the final level of pit #50, we broke out the beer and celebrated. Historian Dean Hunt decided to leave behind a future artifact at the bottom of the pit. We had almost forgotten about it until yesterday when we dug pit #135. After finishing the last level, as we always do, we scanned the walls with a metal detector. We leave a small buffer area between adjacent pits to prevent a wall collapse. The metal detector is just a way to catch a few extra artifacts in the buffer areas. We once found a 1786 silver coin from Granby in this buffer area. Yesterday in the bottom corner of pit #135, we had a strong metal detector hit. This wall was adjacent to pit #50 which we had done eight years ago. Sure enough, it was Dean's artifact. It was still in pretty good shape although the "remove from shelf date" had faded significantly. That date was one day after we dug pit #50. You can't date an item any better than that. Here are some pictures of the item compared to its 2021 version.

Pit 135: Level 3 produced: