A Tour of the Sumnerville Mounds

Dr. Nassaney explaining how to excavate a trench properly

Today we started to excavate in depth at the Lyne site. We already had our area where we were going to be working plotted yesterday, but we were unable to do much if any excavations due to the heavy rain we experienced that afternoon. Today we got to work fairly quickly since everything was already laid out. All the one by one meter trenches needed to be level before we could dig down. We put all the soil that was dug up through one-eighth inch metal screens to make sure we did not miss anything.
 

Looking for artifacts

 Today we did not reach the level where eighteenth century artifacts were found before in the area, but we were able to find other artifacts. We uncovered various amounts of broken glass which can be grouped into three main categories: clear, green, and amber. We were also able to uncover three rather large iron nails along with a rather large iron artifact with a loop at one end which is unidentifiable at this time. Other groups have turned up flint flakes used to make stone tools, more broken glass, some lead shot, and some more iron artifacts.

For dinner we were able to go and visit Barb Cook who, as a member of the Support the Fort Foundation, has been very supportive of the project. After dinner she showed us the ‘Sumnerville Mounds’ which consist of nine Native American burial mounds dating from the first through the fourth century C.E. of which two are right near the historic marker. I was surprised to hear that two of the mounds were not disturbed during the nineteenth century, since that was a fad of that era.

The group in front of the historic marker

Overall it was a pretty good day, with great weather in the afternoon, and a great meal in the evening. I personally cannot wait to get back into the field tomorrow to excavate some more.