Thursday, May 29, 2008

Earlier and Earlier

Pete and I are off to our Calvert County project in a few minutes, but I thought I would post a brief note before leaving, elaborating on yesterday's finds at Port Tobacco.

The small site that we finished collecting yesterday produced only about three dozen historic period artifacts. I washed them last night and noticed that of the three pipestems we collected, two had bore diameters of 7/64ths inches and the other 5/64ths inches. The former are typically of the last quarter of the 17th century.

We also recovered, among the sherds of Buckley earthenware and other redwares, one sherd of Staffordshire Combed Slipware and one of Midlands Yellow. Midlands Yellow, and English ceramic type, has been recovered on sites in the region dating to the very end of the 17th century and the very early 18th century.

The artifact sample is too small for building robust hypotheses, but I suspect we have found the earliest site to date at Port Tobacco. It is almost certainly part of the town's precursor, Chandler's Town. This is a site well worth further exploration.

Jim