A Charred Wood Deposit

Hi,

Max and Alex wetscreening soil from their unit.

My name is Max and I’m a field school student from Western Michigan University. Over these last couple of weeks, my partner and I have been excavating around a deposit of charcoal, charred wood, and ash. When we first began excavating this unit, we had been recovering a high density of burnt and calcined bone, as well as small bits of charcoal, both through trowel excavation and at the wetscreen.

The amount of bone itself is interesting, but it’s also important to think about the lack of other artifacts such as lead shot and seed beads. While in other units such as N8W2, where Vic and Everett are excavating, there is a high density of beads, ceramic, and lead shot. N8W6 uncovered what could be a builders trench as well as a belt buckle. In contrast, we have found very few pieces of anything other than bone and charcoal.

Planview of N8 W10, featuring charred wood, ash,
bone, charcoal, and small stuctural stones. 

As we continued going down, we started finding larger and larger pieces of charcoal and bone, five to seven centimeters long, concentrated in the southwest section of our unit and within the darkest of our soils. As one deposit got larger and larger, we decided to take a carbon 14 sample, which consisted of Erika very carefully folding a piece of it into a piece of aluminum foil, trying to touch it as little as possible.

I had thought, maybe foolishly, that that would have been the end of our strange pile of burnt wood, but as we continued excavating, we uncovered more and more of a long, horizontal piece surrounded by a semi circle of structural stones. The stones are maybe ten centimeters apart, and there are seven of them. Two of them are firecracked rocks, as they have the reddish coloring characteristic of being exposed to high heat. There is also a pile of ash within the stones that we have been picking away at. 

As of now, we’re not totally sure what this means and what we’ve uncovered, but as excavations continue, I hope we can find out.

- Max