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Seventeen volunteers arrived ready to dig!

So many volunteers arrived that we were able to finish the Fork Units around the trash pile and move on to the units to the southwest where we suspect we will find evidence of a structure.

A final animal bone fragment from the trash pile.

Dr. Sharyn Jones, UAB Anthropologist, removes a final, large bone fragment from the trash pile. Over seven hundred pieces of animal bone were recovered from around the fireplace at House 1 and the trash pile in the Fork Units. Catherine Wright, a graduate student working with Dr. Jones and recipient of the Garnet M. Garvin Internship in Historical Archaeology next semester, will do a study of this important collection.

An abundance of iron cookware fragments.

Part of the handle, one leg and three fragments from the lid of a Dutch Oven found in a single 1-meter square.  Two other units contained multiple pieces of iron pots while other units yielded single fragments.  This seems like a high concentration of ironware that may indicate a kitchen.

The site had visitors much earlier in history.

Two stone arrow tips and a piece of chert, not native to the area and showing signs of having been modified by humans, indicate that this area, which may have been a kitchen during the Civil War, may also have served as a small hunting camp during prehistoric times.

Heading home.

A light rain brought an end to a very productive day. The crew passes the blast furnaces after returning from the dig along the same trail that slave ironworkers traveled daily between 1858 and 1865.

The Volunteer Dig Team Arrives for Day 1

we removed the plastic covering the “Fork” Units since June and resumed digging down to sterile subsoil, this is going to be a good crew

We suspect there may have been a kitchen and dinning hall somewhere in or near the Slave Quarters at Tannehill.  We plan to test this new hypothesis because this summer we discovered that the Quarters was a more diverse community than originally thought.  Last year, we discovered that House 1 at the southwest end of the Quarters was probably occupied by a family.  This year we discovered that House 2, at the northeast end of the Quarters, may well have been occupied by unmarried male slaves.  Seasonal labor gangs, made up mostly of males, are a documented feature of antebellum iron making operations in the South so it is no real surprise that there may have been a bachelor community in the Quarters at Tannehill.

If so, how and where were these men fed, and who did the cooking?

the “Fork” and “Rock” Units where a trash pile and fragments of iron cooking vessels were found.

There are many possible locations near the blast furnaces and the Quarters where a kitchen and dining hall may have been located, but the area just south of House 1 is an interesting possibility. It yielded numerous bone fragments from a trash pile as well as pieces of what appear to be several different iron cooking vessels. We will be looking for additional evidence of food preparation and consumption along with evidence that a structure once stood here.  If we find a structure, along with an absence of those types of artifacts that might indicate it was a dwelling rather than a more public place, then we might have a dining hall and kitchen.

large piece of a lid to an iron cooking pot found in “Rock” Units

polycrome painted whiteware found in trash pile

Introduction

This fall, winter and spring we will conduct a series of weekend volunteer digs at the Slave Quarters Site at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park. We have a list of enthusiastic volunteers and should be able to accomplish a great deal.  Not everyone will be able to attend every dig weekend. If you can just make one, we will be happy to see you! If you haven’t signed up to volunteer but want to, email Dr. Bergstresser at jackbergstresser@aol.com. We will send out an email notice to all our volunteers at least a week before each dig weekend.

If you have no archaeology experience, don’t worry! If you don’t mind hard work and getting dirty, we’ll teach you how to dig and keep up with the paperwork. Most of the units we will be excavating are very simple with no complicated stratigraphy or subtle features.  They will provide a great learning experience.  For units with features or other complications, we have more experienced diggers to do the job. The more weekends you can attend, the more you can learn. By next spring you could become a first class digro, a real field animal.

Work will start each morning at 9:00 and run until we get ready to call it a day. If you need to leave early, don’t worry.  We will assemble at the Museum at the Park and go to the site as a group.  Once you learn your way around, you can show up at the dig site on your own.

We have all the tools and equipment that will be needed.  You need to bring gloves, bug spray,  something to kneel on, sturdy clothes, and lunch. We’ll have water, drinks and snacks.

If you don’t want to bring a lunch, we can always send out a runner to pick up some burgers from Top Dawg, the best restaurant  in Green Pond, Alabama, not far from the park.

Map to the Park

Plan of Attack for the Volunteer Dig

We will be doing most of our digging near House 1 in the vicinity of a trash pile that we discovered this  summer.  We named the units in this area the Fork Units after Crew Chief Jessica Brown discovered a fork and a small mid-19th century ceramic fragment eroding out of a small patch of dark stained soil that had been exposed by recent rains. One of the exciting finds from these units was a shell casing from a 52 caliber Spencer repeating rifle like those carried by the Union cavalry raiders who freed the Tannehill slaves when they swept through the ironworks on 31 March 1865.  There are a few photos of our work in these units in an earlier blog post.

Two facts make me want to return to this area and complete the units that we did not finish during the summer.  First, we recovered numerous animal bone fragments from the suspected trash pile.  Secondly, we  recovered what I would consider to be a relatively large number of cast iron cookware fragments in units just to the southwest of the Fork Units.

House 1 and the nearby Fork Units.

The most notable of these cast iron cookware fragments was a large piece of a pot lid as shown below.

There are many potential explanations for the large counts of bone fragments and cast iron cookware pieces but one that interests me is the possibility that there was a kitchen nearby.  Our findings at House 2, at the other end of the Quarters, suggest that it was occupied by single males. House 1 on the other hand was probably occupied by a family with a woman present. Is it possible that this woman was a cook for the single males? And, did these men take their meals in a dinning hall and kitchen that was located near her home?

We may never be able to answer these two questions but its worth a try. I look forward to meeting everyone.  Keep an eye out for emails about dig dates.

Dr Hick.