Archaeologists are uncovering a trove of artifacts from one of the earliest European settlements found in the area just north of Frederica. WDDE’s James Dawson toured the site and brings us this look at what experts say the homestead may have looked like.
[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/fredericadig.mp3|titles= WDDE's James Dawson visits archaeologists digging at a site near Frederica.]
Take a drive south down Route One and bare right just north of Frederica on Barratts Chapel Road and you’ll find one of the earliest examples of colonial living in the Mid-Atlantic.
Archaeologists from AD Marble Company of Pennsylvania have been surveying the site since 2008 after DelDOT officials announced plans to build service roads in the area to reduce traffic congestion.
The archaeologists found records of four different families owning the larger parcel of land in the 1700s, but they haven’t uncovered documents identifying anyone inhabiting this particular site.
That leads them to believe that a tenant farmer rented the land and only occupied it for a short period of time. Their research so far revealed a wealthy man named John Brown owned this particular parcel and a large chunk of the land surrounding it.
Frank Dunsmore, a Field Director for AD Marble, says they’ve found many different examples of pottery and dishware from that time period beneath the soil.
On a table inside of a small trailer are shards of blue and white; former elegant teacups, and saucers that you can imagine lining the shelves of a farmhouse long ago.
Dunsmore also points to a large pile of plastic bags on one corner of the table filled with what he calls “redware.”
“It’s sort of like the plastic of our age,” said Dunsmore. “It’s a red-bodied earthenware and in some cases, to make it look a little bit more decorative what they’re doing is taking a little slip of white on there and as it’s spinning on the wheel they’ll put a little white slip on it. When they glaze it over, that’s how you get the different colors in there.”
But pottery, post molds and the odd shoe buckle aren’t the only things they’ve uncovered.
“We’ve got some evidence of diet as well. Clam shell, oyster, we do have some bone, some pork, things like that,” Dunsmore said.
The process can look a bit tedious. The team of archaeologists initially burrowed a few feet into the sandy soil using a backhoe, clearing out a wide patch of land.
Another Field Director for AD Marble, Rich White explains.
“We’re looking for post molds, which can provide us with evidence of say where stables were, where buildings were, where structures were located, fence lines, those types of things,” said White. “That gives us information about what was occurring on the landscape at the time people were occupying this site.”
Finally, the crew ropes off one-meter squares in areas likely to hold hidden artifacts.
Juli Tarabek is one of the archaeologists gingerly scraping back the dirt, hoping to stumble upon something that will help the team get a better understanding of just who lived here in the mid 1700s.
So far, it’s more of the usual fare.
“We’ve only got a couple centimeters down, but already some brick flecking. Lots of charcoal, lots of charcoal and a couple of small pieces of ceramic,” said Tarabek.
She sweeps those pieces and loose dirt into a bucket, which two other crewmembers sift through two mesh screens.
They then get to pick through the pebbles to make sure nothing gets left behind.
About ten minutes later, another archaeologist named Brian Schneider, unearths a large piece of what could’ve been a white teacup or bowl, much larger than most of the pieces we were shown earlier in the day.
“We rarely see the whole vessel, but yeah, this is a nice one where you can have the rim kind of going down to the main body of the shape of the vessel,” said Schneider.
The fine, blue accents are nearly pristine, with the glaze still glossy and sleek despite being underground for centuries, something Schneider says is unusual.
“I’m kind of impressed, especially with 200 years of plowing that’s going on this property that we are getting the pieces that we are and in the preservation that they are, because it’s going to really help us down the road,” Schneider said.
AD Marble is wrapping up its work at the site this week but the project is far from over.
Field Director Rich White says they’ll soon process the artifacts that they’ve uncovered in their lab and continue to sift through historical documents, looking for any possible tenant who lived on the land.
That work will take about two or three years.
The service road project around Frederica may be underway or completed by that time, but future generations wanting to learn more about their ancestors will have a better understanding of their lives hundreds of years later.