Pit 40: Level 3

Completed May 25, 2013 by IC Go, Odess and David Brinkman. Not far into level 3 we begin to find more artifacts. This is a pattern we have seen in other pits near Riverland Drive. The fact that we found so many Granby period items in level 1 (including a pipe piece) and almost nothing in level 2, seems to prove our theory that the 1960 excavation to make Riverland Drive, pushed artifacts from the area of the road onto our property creating 2 distinct levels of artifacts. Level 3 just kept producing artifacts. So many that I lost feel of how much we had really found. I was also surprised to still be finding significant numbers past the 50cm depth. We have never found artifacts below that depth in Granby. In the end, we went 62 cms and were finding items at 60cm. Among the artifacts were 2 pipe pieces including a stem from 1750-1800. This is only the second stem we have found from that period. Most of the others are from 1720-1750. The biggest find would be what appeared to be a 27 cal buck/musket ball that had been fired (flat on one edge). We would later measure the weight to be 1.9g which is the exact weight of a 27 cal ball. The significance of this level didn't really sink in until the cleaning process when we realized we shattered newly set (from a week ago) records in pottery (broke the record by 9) and nails (broke the record by 3). 70 pieces of pottery and 37 nails just in level 3 make this maybe the most prolific level we have done in Granby. Because it was weak in a few of the other artifact categories, however, pit 40 was not able to overtake pit 38 as the number 1 pit. Finding so much in this new dig area of the yard really has us excited and we now believe the Granby dig will be going on for more than another year. The overall numbers for pit 40 were: 85 pieces of pottery, 52 pieces of glass, 43 nails, 4 pipe pieces, 15 unidentified iron pieces, and 1 Rev War era musket ball.

Pit 40: Level 3 produced:70 pieces of pottery, 38 pieces of glass, 37 nails, 3 pipe pieces (including a 1750-1800 pipe stem), and 1 musket ball.







Above: Excavation of a brick at well over 50cm deep. We have never found artifacts in Granby at the depth we went in level 3.

Above: Cleaning of record breaking artifact numbers in level 3.