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Crew assembles for first day of dig.

In June a dig team launched a search for site where Civil War general Josiah Gorgas and his family lived during an ill fated effort (1866-1870) by the former chief of the Confederate Ordnance Bureau to reopen the Bibb Naval Works.  During the war, the ironworks had supplied pig iron used to cast the famed Brooke guns and cannon prized by southern artillerymen.

Remnants of multiple shallow stone hearths.

A large double fireplace discovered early in the dig became the key we needed define the foot print of the Gorgas home.

The base of a double fireplace.

House corner.

Time ran out before we could determine the full dimensions of the substantial structure but we did succeed in locating several brick support piers and one house corner. 

The Gorgas home is an important part of the Brierfield Ironworks Historical State Park because of the historically significant people who lived here. Josiah Gorgas had achieved prominence in the Confederate military because of his role as Chief of the Confederate Ordinance Bureau. His wife, Amelia Gayle, the daughter of an Alabama governor, went on after her husband’s death to serve as Director of the Library, named in her honor, at the University of Alabama.  Son John Crawford Gorgas developed the program of mosquito control that eliminated yellow fever and made possible the completion of the Panama Canal. In later years, as US Surgeon General, John Crawford would revisit Brierfield telling his hosts that his childhood days there had been among the best of his life.

Members of the Alabama Archaeological Society will assemble for a voulnteer dig at the Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park on Saturday 28 March 2009.  We will be testing a Woodland period site located on a terrace above a bend in Mill Creek. Below are maps to the park and to the assembly area where we will meet at 8:00AM.

Map to the Park.

Map of the Park showing assembly area and dig site.

When you enter the park, turn left and drive to the eastern end of the park. We will assemble at the Overflow Parking Area shown on map above at 8:00AM.  Check out this blog after the dig on 4 April for a report of our findings.  If you are late and have to walk to the site on your own, the Grist Mill Trail begins right next to the Grist Mill. You will have to walk to the trailhead from the overflow parking area.

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.