Pit 81: Level 3

Completed on June 12, 2015 by Karen, James Allen, Jan Ciegler, Baron Moye, Teresa Mitchell, Dean Hunt, DC and Tehye Locke, Odess and David Brinkman. We were joined by first-timer James Allen in level three. We really expected to find a lot in the level but it was below average. With low numbers in level one, the pit did not break 100 artifacts. It felt disappointing at the time but after the artifacts were counted and plotted, a clear architecture pattern may be developing that shows the south-west wall of the storage house. This can be seen in the dramatic drop in key artifact categories of this pit and the diagonal pit to the north-west (pit #46) which also saw the same type of drop. After completing 80 pits, a first official guess was made at the layout of buildings we are finding at the dig. This can seen at this link. This new find narrows the size of the store house which means the clay artifacts found in pit 45, about 15-20 feet south-east of this storage building, may be a third building. As well as the clay artifacts of pit 45, we also had to dig significantly lower while finding artifacts. What other type of building could this be at pit 45? One possibility is a privy (outhouse). When a privy was filled, it was often capped with clay to seal the odor. Many artifacts were found below the levels with clay which also more goes along with a Privy rather than a clay lined cellar of a storage building. We will probably move the dig to this possible privy location for the next pit (#82). In total, all three levels, pit 81 gave us 35 pieces of pottery, 25 pieces of glass, 13 nails, 11 charcoal pieces, a pipe bowl piece, and 2 Native American pieces.

Pit 81: Level 3 produced: 14 pieces of pottery, 6 pieces of glass, 3 nails, 10 charcoal pieces, and 1 Native American piece.

Below: James brought some items that would have been familar to the people of Granby.