Pit 56: Levels 1-3

Completed on December 7, 2013 by the Squires and Knights of Columbus (John Allen, Peter Allen, Tony Allen, Grayson Lewis, Taylor Lewis, Dylan Cambre, Eric Cambre, Azuna Mitchell, Joe Mitchell,Tim Scialdo, Randy Scialdo, John Scialdo, Woodrow St.Pierre, Richard Scialdo), Dean Hunt, and David Brinkman. After completing pit 55, we moved to the other side of the fence into a richer artifact area. The Squires and Knights were ready for the job. It took a little while to get through the grass and roots but we soon started finding artifacts. It rained most of the time so we had to squeeze under a single tent. With these conditions, we decided to keep with doing just a single level to 50cm. We found one piece of Native American pottery and what appears to be an Indian scrapper tool. We found our largest piece of porcelain and, despite no pipe stems, we did find one pipe bowl fragment. The most exciting finds were 2 Revolutionary war shots. One was a .27 caliber ball and the other was a small .20 caliber buck shot. We also found a nice colonial decorative glass button and what appears to be a segment of another button. After cleaning, one stoneware pottery piece that looked Native American, seems to have a date of 17** on it. If so, this would be only the second item we have found with a date (the other being the 1786 coin). Other significant artifacts were a piece of a barrel hoop and the two corner pieces of a flat bottom of a green bottle which may be 18th century. The dark green glass is the same type we find in many of the pits. In other pits, we have found round bottom pieces. We had some very interesting finds in this pit. The Squires and Knights finished the job by filling the hole and pit 56 ended up with good numbers in all artifact categories. Although pits 55 and 56 did not break into the top 20 pits of the Granby dig, they did give us one of the best takes on total artifacts in a day (almost 300). Dean and David enjoyed getting a break from digging this day. Many thanks to the Squires and the Knights of Columbus for doing almost all of the work on these two pits.

Pit 56: Level 1-3 produced: 57 pieces of pottery, 48 pieces of glass, 2 Revolutionary War musket balls, 2 colonial buttons, a barrel hoop piece, 14 nails, 2 pipe bowl pieces, and 3 Native American pieces.

Above: Magnified view of the glass button. Below: The stoneware pottery piece that appears to have a date on it (17??).