Snowdon & Sons Vulcan Iron and Machine Works: Day 4

Hello Everyone,

A volunteer and Jonathan Crise cleaning the foundation.

       Today was a rainy, overcast, and dreary day in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Most archaeologists would have called it a rain-day and went home. Not us. The well drained soils of the concrete and railroad fill makes digging in the rain possible. Besides, does wet concrete make it any easier to dig through? NO! But a good maddock does. I only have two photos today of some archaeologists at work in their trenches. The foundation of the foundry seems largely intact with a sharp break for about 3 feet. The it turns into a pile of bricks, and then back into a cut stone foundation. From a photograph we have, it might represent where a crawl space was located. Only more time and more exploration will tell. Right now, I have to get back to transcribing oral histories from river workers here on the Monongahela, take care. 

Carl Maurer excavating the layer of brick at the bottom of his unit.

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Weekend Archaeology Pics

It's the weekend so I thought I'd share a picture or two from a site I worked on in Southwestern Pennsylvania. 

     

     The first photo is of the field crew troweling down the floor of the main excavation block in order to get a "clean" surface examine for any possible prehistoric features. The archaeologist's trowel is sharpened, like a knife, in order to cut the soil. If it were dull, the delicate soil layers would smear together. 

     I have always valued the connection between archaeology and the community, and here we have two volunteers Ken Gayman and Carl Maurer. Both of these gentlemen are members of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, Mon/Yough Chapter #3. Ken is clearing soil from around a stump's roots, before it can be removed. Carl is screening for artifacts.   

     In this photograph you can see two more members of the Mon/Yough Chapter #3 analyzing artifacts in our lab located in the Monongahela River, Railroad, and Steam Museum in Brownsville, PA. Don Rados and Jim Barno are analyzing each individual flake from the site above. We recovered more that 8,000 Native American artifacts and flakes from their tool production.