Pensacola Colonial Frontiers, 2009-2011

Last official day of field school

2011-07-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

As of Friday morning, the last official day of the 2011 field school, all but two excavation blocks at Mission Escambe had already been backfilled by morning (see picture to right), so we concentrated most of our students in the southernmost area, where several remaining feature and unit transects had to be excavated before documenting the final profiles and plan view maps of each unit, ultimately to be followed by backfilling. Nevertheless, despite our careful plans to finish excavations with a long day on Friday, the skies opened up mid-morning and continued to pour until we finally gave in and moved to the gazebo at the Molino boat ramp for an early lunch.

As radar views confirmed the continuous onslaught of rain, however, the crew took a celebratory swim in the Escambia River before packing up for the last day, realizing that the staff and student supervisors, along with a handful of student volunteers, will have to return for some additional work next week. Our final bedraggled crew shot, taken between episodes of spontaneous puddle jumping, appears below.

Wrapping up the 2011 field season

2011-07-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

The student crew has been working hard since our last post, and since tomorrow is our final day of fieldwork for the 2011 season, a photo update is below. We have learned a tremendous amount of new information over the course of the last 10 weeks, and even though we are still searching for clear indications of the overall size and configuration of both the presumed Spanish cavalry barracks and the overlapping residential structures under the clay cap just to the south (we may have as many as 5 or 6 now, some being explored by Lindsay Cochran and Sarah Bennett in the picture to the right), our progress this summer has been substantial, and we have far more data to work with in our interpretations than ever before. We look forward to our next summer's work at Mission Escambe, and are very grateful to Mr. Richard Marlow for his continued interest, support, and help in our project. With one more day of fieldwork, and additional testing scheduled for the area of the 19th-century mill below the mission site, keep tuned for more blog posts as news emerges regarding fieldwork and followup labwork related to the site.

Above, a crew shot of the 2011 Pensacola Colonial Frontiers field school on the first day of the dig in May; note the low water level in the Escambia River. Pictured are, left to right, Colin Bean, Danielle Dadiego, Norma Harris, Patty McMahon, Lindsey Cochran, Brady Swilley, Alesia Hoyle, Ashley Geisel, Michelle Pigott, Nick Simpson, Rachael Mead, Ralph Hosch, Joe Stevenson, Phillip Mayhair, Jonathan Harpster, Sarah Bennett, John Hueffed, Marie Burrows. Not pictured: Katie Brewer, John Worth.

Above, a final crew shot for the 2011 Pensacola Colonial Frontiers field school; note the high water level in the Escambia River on the same dock. Pictured are, left to right, Marie Burrows, Katie Brewer, Norma Harris, John Worth, Danielle Dadiego, Jonathan Harpster, Ralph Hosch, Lindsey Cochran, Joe Stevenson, Michelle Pigott, Phillip Mayhair, Patty McMahon, Sarah Bennett, Brady Swilley, Colin Bean, Ashley Geisel, Nick Simpson, Rachael Mead, Alesia Hoyle. Not pictured: John Hueffed.

Ralph Hosch bisecting a deep prehistoric post feature below the 19th-century board drain feature visible in the profile wall above.

Alesia Hoyle shading the profile of a bisected feature she is mapping.

Above, a portion of the foot-ring base of a Mexican majolica bowl.

Rachael Mead carefully draws a scaled plan view map of an excavation unit in which animal burrows had previously jumbled mission-era deposits.

Above, a sherd of prehistoric Deptford Check Stamped pottery, associated with the occupation of the Escambe site some 2,200 years ago.

Colin Bean hammers a 1/2 inch soil coring device into the base of a deep feature within a deep excavation unit, hoping to learn more about the underlying stratigraphy of the terrace on which Mission Escambe sits.

A profile view showing the natural soil stratigraphy at the site, extending from surface humus and an underlying 18th-century midden through grayish yellow sandy clay, grading to more orange hues below. Note the archetypical postmold cross-cutting this natural soil profile on the right side.

Brady Swilley photo-cleaning the floor of the excavation unit with the square well dating to the late 19th-century sawmill period; note the builder's trench encircling the central dark fill within the well itself.

Michelle Pigott and Jonathan Harpster map the profiles of a long slot trench excavated in hopes of discovering a northern wall for the presumed cavalry barracks (no trench was ultimately found here).

Danielle Dadiego explains our excavations to members of the Molino Historical Society during their visit to Mission Escambe; also pictured are Jonathan Harpster and Michelle Pigott in the unit.

Above, members of the Colonial Frontiers field school listening to Sarah Hooker explain the stratigraphy of an excavation unit on the site of the UWF Campus Survey field school during our visit there; also pictured are Colin Bean, Lindsey Cochran, Jennifer Melcher, and John Hueffed. Thanks to Dr. Ramie Gougeon, April Holmes, and the supervisors and crew on the Campus Survey for their hospitality in welcoming us to their dig site!

Sights and sounds of the Molino dig

2011-07-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

A new YouTube video has been uploaded, with a compilation of some of the sights and sounds of ongoing archaeological work at Mission Escambe. Only two weeks of fieldwork remain, and more blog posts will follow.

Seven weeks down, three to go

2011-07-02T05:56:00.000-07:00

Time is getting short in our 2011 field season, and our student crews are working hard to finish up their excavation units and reveal as much information as possible about Mission Escambe before we have to backfill in just three weeks. As can be seen in the image to the right, the yellow clay cap has just about disappeared the long slot trench in our southernmost excavation area, revealing (just as was expected) the clay-filled mouths of two wall trenches running east-west, both of which were first encountered in units to the east in 2009 and 2010. There also appears to be another unexpected surprise in the form of a probable wall trench running just west of due north, along the left side of the trench in this photo, cross-cutting both wall trenches (and probably another east-west trench which we should encounter a bit deeper just to the north). There is now a very real possibility that we have no fewer than four superimposed mission buildings in this small area, each on a different footprint, all capped by a sometimes thick layer of yellow clay (and a broader area of gray clay around it). Excavations in this unit will be easier without the clay, but slower now that features are being encountered.

The image to the left provides a good example of the complex nature of the Mission Escambe site. The overall soil profile in the wall shows a dark layer of humus and underlying 18th-century mission-era midden soil, grading into a lighter yellow and finally orange-yellow clay subsoil. Cross-cutting this vertically, however, is a late 19th century board drain trench filled with brick rubble, and below that (the dark bisect excavation in the floor of the unit) is a deeper pit feature probably dating to the prehistoric period. Since people have lived on and utilized this terrace location off and on for at least six millenia, each leaving traces of their activities on the site, we have to be extremely careful and meticulous as we peel back the layers of soil, noting the relationship between each horizontal layer and any vertical disturbances that cut through it, gradually piecing together a portrait of the sequence of events that led to the current configuration of the site. In large part for this reason, we are moving at what seems like a snail's pace in our excavations, gathering as much information as possible before moving forward in search of answers to our many and varied questions.

Below are more images of the past week of fieldwork.

Above, Lindsey Cochran balances high above the 2-meter-long slot trench using a ladder and tree branch (with Danielle Dadiego steadying the ladder) to take a full plan view photo of the unit at this level.

Ralph Hosch demonstrates flat-shoveling as participants in a statewide teacher workshop listen to Lindsey Cochran explaining the excavations in Area C.

Nick Simpson and Phillip Mayhair demonstrate "close quarters" archaeology as they excavate simultaneously in the bottom of a 1.0 x 1.5 meter excavation unit.

Alesia Hoyle, above, demonstrates another example of the awkward poses sometimes required during archaeological excavation in deep units.

Colin Bean with a precision GPS (Global Positioning System) unit designed to tie in the established site grid at Mission Escambe to global UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinates in order to facilitate the use of GIS (Geographic Mapping Systems) software for mapping purposes. Yes, that's a lot of acronyms!

Ashley Geisel shows off a wrought iron nail with preserved wood that looks remarkably similar to the crucifix we have all been imagining finding one day at the mission.

Michelle Pigott shows another large nail with well-preserved remnants of the wood in which it was originally embedded.

Pilgrimage to Apalachee

2011-06-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

Today the students and staff of the Colonial Frontiers field school were joined by the members of two other UWF field schools (Maritime and UWF Campus) in a caravan leading to Mission San Luis, the reconstructed 17th-century capital of the Apalachee mission province in present-day Tallahassee, Florida. The trip was especially meaningful, since some of the Apalachee inhabitants of Mission Escambe in Molino (or their parents or grandparents) may well have been born in Mission San Luis before its destruction in 1704. We were also intrigued to see the configuration and construction details of buildings reconstructed for the public at the site, and to learn more about the archaeological findings that have led to the remarkable reconstructions and new museum facility. We were led on a fascinating tour of the site by archaeologist Heidi Edgar, who appears in several of the photos below along with the students. Today's blog post will simply be a photo essay on our trip.

Group photo showing the nearly 50 UWF students and staff in front of the huge mission church at San Luis.

Students approaching the reconstructed Apalachee council house.

Entering the narrow door to the council house.

Students learning about the archaeology that led to the reconstruction in which they are standing.

Another view showing the gargantuan size of the council house.

Students having a closer look at the reconstructed Spanish family dwelling on the edge of the town plaza, recently re-roofed with plank shingles instead of thatch.

A view of the reconstructed Spanish fort, built near the end of the mission's existence as defense against increasing English/Creek hostilities which eventually led to the destruction and abandonment of the mission.

The entrance to the "casa fuerte" within the stockade and moat.

Students perusing the interior of the mission church (and probably wondering if we will eventually be able to identify the presumably much smaller church at Mission Escambe).

A view inside the archaeological lab at Mission San Luis, where students were treated to a look at a diverse array of remarkable artifacts from the Apalachee/Spanish mission community.

Rain days, labwork, and more progress

2011-06-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Week 6 has unfortunately been cut short by several rain days, so today we had our first full lab day for students on the UWF campus. Our entire crew spent the day rough-sorting material that was excavated during the first weeks of the 2011 field season, making some initial progress toward the inevitably lengthy process of laboratory analysis that will occupy the entire fall and probably part of next year (pictured to right is Jennifer Melcher explaining lab procedures to the students).

Bags of artifacts collected from the sifting screens in the field were carefully sorted by size, and then by material (stone, ceramics, iron, glass, etc.), all with meticulous documentation and bagging in order to preserve the exact provenience of each item (to left are Brady Swilley, Sarah Bennett, Joe Stevenson, and John Hueffed in the midst of rough sorting). This process is the first step toward identification and classification of each artifact, which will be carried out under the supervision of lab staff by these and other students this fall semester during their archaeological lab class. For archaeologists, each week in the field can easily result in a month of followup labwork (depending on how many students are working on each project), but no fieldwork is ever complete without a full range of laboratory followup, and subsequent publication of the results.

We did have several good days of fieldwork this week however, as the pictures below will illustrate:

Above, Ralph Hosch carefully draws a profile map of the north wall of a unit that has just been excavated, so that the next unit to the north can be excavated next, in part using this profile drawing as a guide to which soil layers may be encountered next.

Using her well-equipped excavation kit to the right, Danielle Dadiego clears exposed ceramics and charcoal at the surface of a newly-identified feature just below the 19th-century brick-lined trench previously excavated here.

Above, a sherds of colorful Mexican-made majolica, probably Abó Polychrome, next to another sherd that has lost its surface glaze.

The uppermost deposits in most excavation units at Mission Escambe contain debris from the late 19th-century sawmill which occupied the lowlands below the terrace bluff, including the iron spikes and coal pictured above.

Saving the shade-giving trees at the site from the need to clear for mapping using the total station sometimes involves extreme measures in order to bend the trees out of the way, as Lindsey Cochran and Danielle Dadiego demonstrate above.

Half way through

2011-06-18T04:01:00.000-07:00

Rain and lightning shortened the last two days of week 5, though shade and occasionally cooler temperatures were a welcome relief from this summer's heat and humidity. Progress continued in the field, nonetheless, including the recovery of a large Native American potsherd with a foot-ring base (pictured in lab above and below). This sherd is what archaeologists term colono ware, referring to Native-made ceramics crafted in European vessel forms. Such sherds are comparatively rare, even on mission sites, but this sherd was from a vessel clearly designed to be used on a flat table, which was likely atypical for the Apalachee residents of Mission Escambe. Recent master's thesis research by former UWF grad student Jennifer Melcher suggests that such vessels were likely made by Indians for Spanish use, and were produced within the context of a local market for Native-made tableware as replacements for relatively scarce supplies of Mexican and Spanish majolica. The sherd pictured here might have been made for the resident Franciscan missionary at Escambe, or for the cavalry officer or soldiers, though it also might have graced the table of chief Juan Marcos, or any other Apalachee dignitary who occasionally entertained European visitors.

This colono ware sherd was recovered from deep within the posthole pictured above, and was almost as wide as the posthole itself. Well over a dozen other good-sized sherds have been recovered from this posthole, which obviously served as an impromptu dump for trash.

Thursday morning our students were also pleased to visit one of the other two terrestrial UWF field school sites at Arcadia Mill (pictured to left, and below). There, principal investigator John Phillips was aided by Brian Mabelitini and several graduate student supervisors in explaining their ongoing quest to locate residential structures and activity areas associated with slaves employed at the mill during the early-to-mid 19th century. Though we were literally chased out off the site by rain, everyone enjoyed the chance to see another dimension of UWF's archaeology program. Thanks to one at all at Arcadia!

More pictures of recent work at Mission Escambe are presented below (along with a link to a video).

Above, Colin Bean practices high-tech archaeological fieldwork, excavating in front of a laptop computer!

Students Ashley Geisel and John Hueffed continue work exploring the eastern end of the long wall-trench structure that we have been following since 2009, now including a very large subsurface disturbance that either borders the end of the wall or truncates it to the east.

Danielle Dadiego explains the yellow clay cap layer to retired National Park Service archaeologist Bennie Keel, while Rachael Mead flat-shovels through the tough clay.

And finally, linked here is a YouTube video of our "quick-exit" strategy for impending downpours...pile all the students into Norma Harris' truck for a quick ride to the parking area!

Mill and mission

2011-06-13T15:09:00.001-07:00

Over the past few days, student teams have been making steady progress, and more discoveries. One of the most important regards the clarification of the function and date of the brick-filled trench discovered in 2010, and which we have been exploring this year. A total of five bricks marked with the "J. GONZALEZ" imprint were ultimately found in the section of the trench opened this year, confirming that the bricks were 19th-century in age, and probably associated with the nearby ruins of Molino Mills (1866-1884), currently under investigation by UWF graduate student Joe Grinnan (see below). Today, the central lower section of this trench was excavated into the layer which produced paired rows of nails last year, and which resulted in the same pattern this year (picture above, showing nails in place). Evidence continues to build that this trench represents the remains of what was variously called a "board drain" or "underdrain" during the 19th century, through which water flowed through a square or triangular board-lined channel buried in a narrow trench at the bottom of a wider trench filled with stones or similar rubble.

Until recently, however, we could find no particular reason for this board drain, but last Friday we were surprised to find that the substantial subsurface disturbance associated with a large depression on the surface of the ground was most likely a well upslope at the head of this drain feature. As can be seen in the picture to the left, we cored the soil in this rectangular pit down to a depth of nearly a meter, finding what appears to be layers of water-lain sand at this depth. Whether this pit was an open well, or surrounded an as-yet undiscovered pipe driven to make an artesian well, we now suspect that the well and the drain feature were both constructed as part of the 19th-century sawmill operation downslope at the site, perhaps bringing water for the operation of the steam engine.

In this connection, last week also saw two days of fieldwork by students from the UWF maritime archaeological field school, under the supervision of Joe Grinnan (pictured at right explaining ongoing fieldwork to our terrestrial students at Molino). Two teams mapped both underwater and terrestrial remnants of the pilings and trough features associated with the 19th-century Molino Mills sawmill operation along the Escambia River. We were excited to see ongoing work relating to a second research project at this same location in Molino, especially since it underlined the importance of this landform throughout human history in this region. Details about the fieldwork can be found on the weekly video blog of the UWF Maritime Field School, entitled "Bend in the River: The Molino Mills Project" on YouTube (which includes some video shots of our terrestrial student crews at work).

Ongoing excavations in the 18th-century mission-period deposits at Escambe are revealing more enticing clues as to the structures and activity areas at the site. To left is the cleaned surface of an orange-yellow clay cap layer bounded to the north and south by gray clay and underlying midden, exposed over the past few days. This clay layer corresponds well to a similar deposit just east of this trench excavated in 2009 and 2010, under which were the traces of overlapping wall trenches from at least three mission-era buildings. We hope further excavation here will provide important evidence for the size and configuration of these structures, and how (if at all) they relate to the final clay cap layers.

Other areas of the excavation are providing some surprises, including the discovery of a posthole filled with more than a dozen sherds of Apalachee pottery, possibly discarded there when the post was pulled up and backfilled (see picture to right, with three sherds still in place). Many of these sherds belong to the same vessel, though there are several others as well.

Below are additional shots from the site during the past few days.

Above, Norma Harris and Michelle Pigott practice their shovel-toss (note perfectly formed shovelful of dirt caught leaving Norma's shovel).

Above, an unusual glass necklace bead discovered today, probably an 18th-century "melon bead."

A view of the same bead backlit with sunlight, showing its translucent cobalt blue color.

Colin Bean with his Area B mascot, "Bert the Beetle" (who made a brief appearance this morning before returning to his normal life).

Meet the crew

2011-06-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

The 2011 UWF Pensacola Colonial Frontiers field school is truly a team effort, and today's post highlights our crew, with photos accompanying brief bios, all written by the students and staff themselves, in alphabetical order.
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Colin Bean: "I am a second year graduate student at UWF. I am interested in British colonial archaeology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I have been doing archaeology since the summer of 2007."

Sarah Bennett will enter UWF's graduate program this Fall to pursue an MA in Historical Archaeology. She is interested in Colonial archaeology of Northeast Florida and public archaeology. Sarah also enjoys the beach, reading, movies, and being outdoors.

Katie Brewer: "I graduated in 2010 with my B.S. in Anthropology and History from Portland State University in Oregon. I am currently using both areas to pursue my Master's in Historical Archaeology. This field school is a learning opportunity to help me in my goal of a career in archaeology."

Marie Burrows is an undergraduate studying Historical Archaeology and working to support herself and her husband and two year old daughter. She hopes to stay in the area and find CRM work so that her daughter can be raised close to both sets of grandparents.

Lindsey Cochran is a graduate student at the University of West Florida studying terrestrial historical archaeology. Her primary academic interests include plantation studies and British colonial archaeology.

Danielle Dadiego: "I am a second year graduate student at the University of West Florida studying historical archaeology. My main interests include paleography, working with Spanish and ecclesiastical Latin historical documents and colonial trade systems."

Ashley Geisel: "I am a senior undergrad at UWF with a double major in archaeology and history with a minor in European studies. I want to go on to specialize in medieval and early Britain doing some sort of public archaeology."

Jonathan Harpster: "I'm an army brat, born in Germany to an army serviceman, I've wanted to do Archaeology since I was around 3 and first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even though archaeology is nothing like Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones I'm still more than happy to do it, and enjoy spending time in the field or even the lab simply because I like to stop and think about what these items were used for and what history is behind them."

Norma Harris is a Research Associate at the UWF Archaeology Institute, specializing in Native American and Spanish colonial projects. She has been doing archaeology in Florida and Georgia for more than 20 years.

Ralph Hosch, Jr. is a native of St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana who received his BA in Anthropology from Tulane University at the ripe old age of 36. His subfield of interest is in Biological Anthropology, but his heart belongs to Archaeology. Ralph’s sons, Landon and Zachary, are upset we still haven’t found a golden idol, but are relieved that Ralph hasn’t been chased by a giant bolder yet (thanks Indy)!

Alesia Hoyle: "I am studying Archaeology and Studio Art at the University of West Florida. I have wanted to an archaeologist since the 6th grade and have always loved creating art. The world is beautiful in its state of constant growth and deterioration, and I desire to bring this to light in my work as a dirt lover and artist."

John Hueffed graduated with a BA from the University of South Alabama. He is interested in classical archaeology.

Phillip Mayhair: "I am a undergraduate Archaeology major at UWF. I grew up locally and graduated from Northview High School in 2008. I have a strong interest in Pensacola's history, especially the colonial colonial era, and I work at Historic Pensacola Village."

Patty McMahon is a graduate student in the Historical Archaeology program at UWF. Her primary academic interests are contact period archaeology, public archaeology, and preservation, and her secondary interests include pretty much everything else.

Rachael Mead is an Anthropology and Classics senior at the University of Florida, but a Pensacola native. She joined the field school this year to learn more about the history of Pensacola and get field experience in archaeology. She is interested in classical history and ancient languages and plans to pursue a graduate degree in Classical Archaeology.

Michelle Pigott is a new UWF graduate student studying historical archaeology. She is originally from Orlando and is excited to be living in a new city with such a deep and complex history. When she's not thinking about how awesome Florida archaeology is, Michelle likes to sew, read or play video games.

Nick Simpson: "I'm a senior, majoring in archaeology and I would like to get a master's in bioarchaeology from University of Colorado at Boulder. I like to spend my free time climbing, skating, skim boarding and slack lining. I also have every album from every band Slash has ever been in."

Joseph Stevenson is a undergraduate Sophomore at the University of Miami. He is perusing majors in Anthropology and Marine Affairs. After that he plans to go on to graduate school.

Brady Swilley: "I am an archaeology major interested in the medieval period of the Middle East. I am also a very devoted Christian."

John Worth is Assistant Professor of historical archaeology in the UWF Department of Anthropology. Since his first archaeological field school 30 years ago, he has specialized in the impact of European colonization on the Southeastern Indians. In addition to archaeology, he conducts archival research on colonial Spanish documents.

Following leads

2011-06-06T15:44:00.001-07:00

Despite high heat and humidity over the past few days, as well as a rainstorm last Friday which required bailing the units this morning, student crews are making solid progress in a number of excavation units, pushing downward in an effort to discover subsurface trenches and pits which will help us understand the layout and configuration of Mission Escambe's structures. One unit which may overlap a north-south trending wall trench filled with yellow clay produced a surprise in the form of an ash and charcoal-filled feature adjacent to the clay (above is Phillip Mayhair bisecting the feature). This feature may be the remains of a large (though shallow) burned post, or it may be a hearth or smudge pit, or something else entirely.

The long wall trench we have been following since 2009 seems to be coming to an end to the east, where there is as-yet no evidence of the trench continuing into our easternmost testpit. Careful exposure of the trench from the last unit it appeared in should allow us to delineate the probable corner, and will guide us in additional testing to determine the exact shape and size of what we presume to be the Spanish barracks (to right is Ralph Hosch excavating the feature eastward toward its likely terminus in the unit at the top of the picture).

To the west, a larger testpit opened south of the presumed western end of this wall trench has yet to encounter any evidence of the structure's western wall, so we will likely have to turn our attention northward to see if the corner discovered last year is the southwest corner instead of the northwest, as we had initially interpreted. With each bit of negative evidence, however, we narrow down our search for the clues to this large but maddeningly elusive colonial building.

Adjacent to this trench, a large (apparently) circular pit feature is carefully being excavated by levels into its dark, mottled fill (to left is Nick Simpson scraping the soil matrix around the feature on the left side of the unit). The pit seems to be getting narrower with depth, but it still dwarfs all other pits and postholes yet discovered at the site, so we are increasingly intrigued to learn its function. A large glass necklace bead was discovered in the matrix of this unit today (photo at bottom), probably providing further evidence of the Indian trade at this mission village.

To the south, we have also just opened a pair of units constituting a long slot trench we hope will expose the cross-section of as many as four mission-era wall trenches found just to the east in previous years. Unfortunately, this trench also falls between several fast-growing sweetgum trees, and the interwoven roots of these trees comprise a formidable barrier to the kind of slow, careful excavation we intend to conduct (photo to right). With the roots nearly all gone, we anticipate beginning to see evidence for mission-era structures soon.

Step by step, our 2011 summer field school team is following the leads that will provide at least some of the answers we seek at Mission Escambe this year.

Above, a large clear glass necklace bead, wire-wound and faceted, dating to ca. 1700-1800 and possibly made in Amsterdam but common on period Spanish colonial sites.

The return of the heat

2011-06-01T17:24:00.000-07:00

With temperatures approaching 100 degrees today, students still continue to make progress in excavations at Mission Escambe. The brick-filled trench discovered last year has finally (and reluctantly) begun to yield up more definitive clues as to its age. Following careful excavation, photography, and the creation of a detailed scale map (pictured to left, drawn by Alesia Hoyle and Rachel Mead), the bricks are gradually being removed and cleaned in the field in order to determine whether any maker's marks are present which might help pin down a date for the feature. Finally, today, a large part of a brick appeared within the feature showing a portion of the familiar "J. GONZALEZ" name present on many of the bricks from the nearby late 19th-century sawmill's ruins (pictured below). This makes it very likely that the entire brick feature post-dates the 1830s (when the bricks began to be produced). We still have to confirm whether the deeper portion of the trench, with double rows of parallel nails marking some sort of wooden structure underneath, is also a 19th-century feature, or perhaps originally constructed during the mission period.

We are also continuing to trace the wall-trench structure we believe to be the cavalry barracks, though as yet we still have no unequivocal confirmation of either the west or east walls of the structure. Nevertheless, we have opened a new excavation unit over another pit feature that showed up in a corner of one of our 2010 units, just south of the wall trench, and this pit is now quite clearly defined as a rounded pit perhaps a meter in diameter (photo to right). With continued work we hope to discover whether this pit relates to some architectural feature or some other activity such as simple trash disposal. At another end of this wall trench, a large and partially-charred bone from a deer was uncovered (pictured below), providing additional evidence for foodways (and the deerskin trade) at the site.

We have also been pleased to welcome students from two other summer field schools in the past few days, including the UWF Forensic Anthropology Field School led by Dr. Joanne Curtin, as well as the UWF Campus Field School, led by Dr. Ramie Gougeon. Pictures from these visits, as well as other shots from the past few days, are shown below.

Above, Patty McMahon shows ongoing work to members of the UWF Forensic Anthropology Field School.

Students from the UWF Campus Field School listening to Colin Bean explaining current excavation strategies at the presumed barracks structure.

Patty McMahon photographs the profile of a bisected feature.

Two mendable sherds of Guadalajara Polychrome, a colonial Mexican ceramic type dating to the 18th century.

Rain and more finds

2011-05-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Today we experienced our first rain of the field season at Molino, and packed in early. Nevertheless, the last couple of days have been productive in terms of progress toward our goal of defining the structures and activity areas at Mission Escambe. We are better defining the area encompassed by the gray clay floor (?) in the southern end of the site, and at the same time encountering what may be further evidence for earlier wall trenches filled with yellow clay (to left are Phillip Mayhair documenting a shovel test shaded by Danielle Dadiego, with Norma Harris to the right). We are also closing in on a possible corner of the presumed barracks structure that now extends for nearly 17 meters across the site, as well as another potential wall line and other features in this area. Students are also following another possible mission-era wall trench in the northern margin of the site (perhaps an Apalachee structure), while simultaneously discovering further evidence of prehistoric occupation at the site. Below are photos of some of the students at work, as well as some of our most recent finds providing further clues about past activities in various areas of the site.

Above, Ralph Hosch and Nick Simpson shovel-scrape the floor of an excavation unit.

Colin Bean keeps up with his field notebook, recording every detail about ongoing fieldwork in his area.

Rachael Mead and Alesia Hoyle carefully draw a scale map of the brick-lined trench feature.

A rimsherd of Puebla Blue on White majolica.

A sherd of Apalachee pottery, classified as Lamar Incised, variety Ocmulgee Fields.

A prehistoric check-stamped rimsherd, possibly Gulf Check Stamped, associated with the Santa Rosa-Swift Creek culture dating nearly 2 millenia ago.

Remnants of a handful of copper-alloy rivets discovered in one excavation unit, one of which has a molded star decoration on the head (the rest are plain). The function of these objects, and when they were made (during or after the mission period), is not yet known with certainty (suggestions are welcome!).

Great weather, steady progress

2011-05-24T16:41:00.001-07:00

As we enter our second week of the 2011 field season, the weather continues to be clear, dry, and not too hot or humid (yet), and all our student teams are making great progress toward answering some of our most pressing questions about Mission Escambe. Each new excavation unit opened answers some questions, but normally raises others, and after two summers of fieldwork at the site, we have lots of questions!

Several excavation units have been opened along the known or expected track of Feature 10, a substantial post-on-sill wall trench we believe may be part of the 1760 cavalry barracks built at the mission. We have now confirmed that the trench extends for at least 15 meters from the corner we discovered last year (above, see Danielle Dadiego and Colin Bean studying the plan view of the trench, located in the left side of the open unit), and a new testpit is currently being excavated to the east to determine whether it continues in that direction. Another excavation unit has been opened due south of the corner discovered last year, and there are preliminary signs that we may be coming down on the western wall of the barracks structure in this unit as well. The military barracks located in San Miguel de Panzacola at the same time (1760s) were no shorter than about 17.5 meters, and housed substantially more soldiers, so we anticipate finding another corner very soon.

In another area, students are excavating along the course of a brick-filled trench discovered last year to the north of the barracks (to right are John Hueffed and Rachael Mead excavating on either side of the exposed bricks). So far, all the bricks in this trench appear to be handmade and distinct from those found in nearby sawmill ruins known to date to the late 19th century, but as yet we are uncertain as to the date of this feature. Analysis of last year's excavations suggest the trench may include fragments of 19th-century bricks, but we hope to clarify this situation in 2011.

To the south, shallow shovel tests have been opened in the area of a widespread gray clay layer that was identified last year capping yellow clay fill within post-in-trench wall trenches from no fewer than three overlapping mission-era structures. We have already discovered what appears to be the eastern limit of this gray layer (left are Phillip Mayhair and Michelle Pigott mapping two of these tests), but units to the north still show evidence of the clay, and southern and western tests have yet to be started. The soil in this area is very dry (as it is across the rest of the site), making it a challenging task to probe this layer and discern color changes while excavating.

Among the more common residential debris from the mission site such as Apalachee Indian pottery fragments, rusted nails, etc., students discovered the drawn white tubular glass bead below, as well as a well-preserved large wrought iron nail or spike (unrusted where fire must have tempered the iron), and a lead musketball (approximately 59 caliber; clipped by the shovel), all shown below:

Tubular glass bead.

Large wrought iron nail, partially unrusted.

Lead musketball, approximately 15 mm. in diameter.

We're back...2011 field season begins!

2011-05-19T06:20:00.000-07:00

The 2011 University of West Florida Colonial Frontiers field school is now underway, and we're pleased to inaugurate a new series of entries to our annual project blog. With a team of 14 students enrolled in the undergraduate section, 3 graduate student supervisors, and graduate student field director Danielle Dadiego, along with principal investigators John Worth and Norma Harris, we have successfully re-cleared the 2010 excavation area from all the growth that had sprouted since last year, re-established our mapping grid, and laid in and begun excavating five new excavation units as of Wednesday of our first week. Our goals for this summer include finally tracing out the complete outline of the large post-on-sill wall-trench structure which we have been following for two seasons (and which we suspect is the 1760 cavalry barracks), exploring the architectural features associated with at least three overlapping post-in-trench wall-trench structures under multiple clay caps just south of the possible barracks structure (this area may be the convento and/or church area of the mission), and continuing to explore the possible Apalachee residential area which produced multiple posts and smudge pits dating to the mission period last year, and which contains an as-yet undefined brick-filled trench feature that we hope to clarify this year. More details will follow in subsequent posts, but the images below will give a general sense of our work at the site so far.

Above, supervisors Patty McMahon, Lindsey Cochran, and Colin Bean work on setting up the total station for mapping, with Norma Harris looking on.

Students Alesia Hoyle, Michelle Pigott, Phillip Mayhair, and Joe Stevenson learning total station procedures from Lindsey Cochran.

Marie Burrows and Katie Brewer lay out an excavation unit with Colin Bean looking on.

Students Brady Swilley, Rachael Mead, Sarah Bennet, Ashley Geisel, and John Hueffed look on as Patty McMahon explains the strategy for re-excavating an unfinished unit from the 2010 field season.

Students Jonathan Harpster, Marie Burrows, and Ralph Hosch beginning excavation in a new unit.

Field Director Danielle Dadiego explains mapping to students Nick Simpson and Ralph Hosch.

Colin Bean goes above and beyond, bending a tree out of the way of the total station.

Completing the 2010 Colonial Frontiers field school

2010-07-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

On Friday, students finished excavation and documentation of all but three remaining units, and backfilled the rest on our final day of the 2010 field school at Molino (pictured at right is Sara Smiddie returning for another wheelbarrow load of dirt). Field conditions during our final days were extremely hot and muggy, but in the end it was an approaching afternoon thunderstorm that ran our crew out a bit earlier than expected.

The 2010 field season was a resounding success on several fronts. While in the end we probably found more questions than answers, and more complexity than clarity, we nonetheless made great progress in understanding the Escambe mission site overall, and obtained a much broader view of the structures we encountered last year.

One of the more intriguing features discovered last year was the substantial post-on-sill wall-trench we believe to have been part of the Spanish cavalry barracks documented to have been built during the summer of 1760 under the direction of engineer Phelipe Feringan Cortés. As can be seen in the mosaic image below showing the largest contiguous section in this area (south is to top), we opened broad areas of this trench during the 2010 season, extending over a total of more than 12 1/2 meters of the trench's original length.

Friday, on our very last day, we were thrilled to confirm that the westernmost end of this trench had finally been encountered, and that we had indeed discovered the northwest corner of this building (pictured at right is graduate supervisor John Krebs reveling in the moment). The east-west trench apparently terminates and turns south (to the left in the picture below), while a substantial wooden buttress post extends just northward from the corner, within which nearly a dozen nails were discovered, presumably anchoring the post (see rectangular patch of light-colored clay just right of the wall-trench corner in the lower left corner of the picture). Based on the discovery of this corner, as well as the extent of the wall-trench running due east from this point, we now know that the presumed barracks structure was at least 12 1/2 meters east-to-west, amounting to some 15 Spanish colonial varas. This was clearly a substantial structure, despite the fact that the cavalry garrison of 15 men was located in such a small, remote mission village.

To the south, excavations in the area of three overlapping post-in-trench wall-trenches produced a remarkable 6-meter-long profile showing the trenches and associated dark midden deposits, as well as at least two episodes of clay capping (in the photo mosaic below see deeper yellow clay layers underlying the lighter gray-pink clay just below the surface). This profile provides crucial details augmenting what we have already discovered about the shape and configuration of the three successive structures built in this location, though much more work remains to be done in order to trace out the walls and discover the overall size and function of the structures. The artifact assemblage discovered in this area of the site is somewhat distinctive, including not just a wide range of non-aboriginal goods such as Spanish cookware and tableware, Oriental porcelain, a folding razor, and abundant lead shot, but also a considerable proportion of red-filmed aboriginal pottery (presumably made by Apalachee potters) and other ceramic types. This excavation block in particular has become more complex over the course of our summer work, and we won't expect to get any definitive answers until additional fieldwork is carried out next year.

Among the noteworthy finds from our last days include a sherd of prehistoric shell-tempered pottery with an adorno loop handle (pictured to right), discovered in the remaining northern excavation block which has already produced considerable evidence for prehistoric occupation at the site. Documentation of this block will have to wait until early next week, when we plan to finish up what remains and backfill the open units using staff and supervisors, along with student volunteers.

Another discovery was the second ground stone discoidal found at the site, made from fine-grained red sandstone and ground into a small disc, possibly used for gaming. Though this example is considerably smaller than a greenstone discoidal discovered last year, it was still an exciting find (pictured below is finder Cody Poitevint holding the disc). Whether or not it was made and used during the mission period, or instead during prehistoric occupation at the same site (or even found and re-used during the mission period), it nonetheless provides evidence of stonework using extralocal material.

Though we will post additional blog entries following additional wrap-up work next week, at this time we would like to express our considerable thanks to Mr. Richard Marlow and his family for their hospitality and support throughout our field season. Continuing research at Mission Escambe would not have been possible without their interest and help. We are also grateful to Boyett's Septic Tank & Vacuum Pumping for the generous donation of the use of a portable toilet and sink throughout the 2010 field school, for the second year in a row. The Pensacola Colonial Frontiers project is sponsored by the Archaeology Institute and Department of Anthropology at the University of West Florida. We would also like to acknowledge the help and interest of a number of volunteers and visitors, including but not limited to Wayne Abrahamson, Neal Collier, Dave Dodson, Sarah Everhart, Nick Honerkamp, Sarah Mitchell, Debbie Mullins, Aubrey Palmer, Harold Pope, and Amanda Salazar Clonts.

Trying to finish

2010-07-22T04:41:00.000-07:00

Two more days to go, and several excavation units have already been finished and backfilled, while work continues in other areas. The long section of wall-trench exposed this year is still being carefully documented, though two units on either end of our current excavations still hold promise to provide clues about the overall size and orientation of the structure (pictured at right are Patrick Johnson and Linda Geary creating a plan view of the trench).

The two larger units being excavated down into prehistoric occupational layers are still proving to be challenging, especially given the large number of posts and other possible small pit features, several of which intrude upon each other, and some of which have turned out to be quite deep (working in the unit in the picture at left are Stephanie Poole and Amelia Easterling).

In addition, the remaining units in the area of overlapping wall-trenches are proceeding nicely, and we are finally clarifying some of the trench relationships, as well as making new discoveries within the rich midden deposit just below the clay caps in this area (pictured at right are Ben Garrett and Jesse Hamilton mapping one of these units). The pictures below will show some of the recently-discovered artifacts from our remaining excavation units, along with a video showing some of our first backfilling activity for this year.

The first image shows a handful of mission-period artifacts, including red-filmed and brushed Native American pottery, and a chipped bifacial scraping tool made from European botttle glass. Below the first image is a shot of the biface in sunlight, showing its translucent color.

Pictured below is a large sherd of prehistoric pottery from the shell-tempered Pensacola series, probably dating several hundred years before European contact. The incised and punctated designs are very similar to a large sherd found below the bluff which originally led us to conduct testing in this area in 2009.

The image below shows a different type of incised pottery found yesterday within the brick-filled trench discovered recently just north of the presumed barracks wall. It dates to the mission period, and is a local variant of the Ocmulgee Fields Incised pottery commonly associated with Creek Indians to the north.

Finally, the video below shows Jennifer Melcher, Linda Geary, Brett Briggs, and Patrick Johnson loading wheelbarrows with sifted dirt for backfilling the nearby excavation unit.

Our last week begins

2010-07-20T03:45:00.000-07:00

Since our last post, two of three workdays (including one extra day on Saturday) have been cut short by downpours. Despite that, our final Monday for the 2010 season witnessed quite a bit of progress, since we are hoping to finish up as much as possible before backfilling Friday. As can be seen in the photo above, we have expanded our excavations this year considerably beyond the small number of units opened in 2009, in one case necessitating a line of three tents and an improvised tarp side-by-side. This block of excavation units traces the wall-trench we believe to have been part of the Spanish barracks, which now appears to terminate in or just before the westernmost unit, giving the building a minimum east-west dimension of roughly 10 meters (some 12 Spanish varas). Since the eastern trench may continue past our open excavations, we opened one more small unit to the east on Monday, hoping that we will either define the end of the wall-trench or confirm that it extends beyond 12 meters.

Just to the north, the excavation unit opened in the area showing earlier Archaic, Woodland and Mississippi-period occupation is finally moving down below the bulk of the overlying mission deposits (including the brick-lined trench discussed in previous posts, still being excavated at the same time). A number of new feature stains have now appeared in the eastern of two adjacent 2x2 m. units, and we have high hopes that some of these may be associated with the possible Deptford structure associated with the deep post discovered just north of these units (pictured above is Matt Tanner standing in this year's "Swiss-cheese" unit, with Linda Geary and Norma Harris in the background). Meanwhile, the brick-lined trench (pictured below) continues to be excavated toward its base, and the narrow central trench shows up clearly within the fill of the broader trench. The number of nails in this deeper trench is remarkable, and we hope that complete excavation of this small slice of the trench will provide clues as to its function.

Farther south, a new 1x1 m. unit opened next to the overlapping wall-trench structure we have been exploring this year is finally pushing down into the underlying midden deposit, which is already producing a range of artifacts, including Spanish and Native American ceramics, lead shot, and a seed bead. In the picture above, Norma Harris and Danielle Dadiego are scraping the surface of two visible deposits--yellow clay fill presumably overlying one or more wall-trench depressions, and dark brown midden representing the original occupational surface associated with these structures (note the wheelbarrows full of excavated dirt from these clearly-distinguished color zones).

Finally, during our drenching on Saturday morning, we were intrigued to see that the southwestern terminus of the brick-lined trench (see small shovel-test unit in front of Jennifer Melcher in the picture to right) is precisely in the right spot to have acted as a drain for the substantial puddle that accumulated during the rainstorm immediately north of the presumed barracks wall (to left in picture, under sandbagged plastic). While this may simply be coincidence, it might provide one further clue supporting the idea that this trench may have been related to downslope drainage adjacent to the 1760 barracks structure.

We have only four days left, so we're still hoping to find a few answers to the many questions we have generated during this year's work.

Trenches, a baby chicken, and an owl

2010-07-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

The last three days have witnessed steady progress in all areas of the mission site, though answers to our research questions are proving difficult to come by. The sturdy post-on-sill wall-trench discovered last year, still believed to be part of the 1760 Spanish barracks at Escambe, has yet to display a definitive end or corner, though we have finally excavated one unit on the western end which shows no traces of the trench in line with the rest of the wall, meaning the wall ends somewhere in the skipped unit just east (and in an old tree-fall depression, also under a modern sweetgum). To the east (pictured above), the wall-trench extends a total of nine meters already exposed, and might possibly continue even farther before finally reaching (presumably) a corner. We are fast running out of time to wrap up what we have already excavated, so some answers may have to wait.

Farther south, detailed dissection of the overlapping post-in-trench wall-trench features continues, and we hope to be able to disern whether or not there is a door gap present in the north-south wall, and whether or not the earlier trench it crossed relates to some ambiguous feature staining associated with the junction of these two features (see picture above).

The unusual brick-filled trench feature explored early this week has provided some surprises as students excavated deeper under the bricks (see picture to right). Although the main trench is rougly 50 cm. wide and filled with brick rubble, centered underneath it is a narrower trench (15 cm. wide) that has virtually no brick rubble, but which contains two rows of wrought iron nails side by side running longitudinally down the trench. The uppermost set of nails are pointing down, and lower layers appear to be pointing up, all of which suggests there was some sort of narrow wooden structure nailed together inside this trench, and then capped with brick rubble. The possibility of some sort of wood-lined channel underneath a wider rubble-filled trench is still consistent with some sort of land drain running downslope from the barracks area, though it is possible this may represent something else. Careful probing at the southwestern terminus of this trench allowed us to open a 50 x 50 cm. shovel test bisecting the end of this feature, and we are already finding the same brick rubble in association with a shallower fired clay platform on the outside of the brick-filled trench. More excavation should provide us with clues to help interpret this unusual feature.

Finally, the crew was startled today when an owl came swooping through the excavation area and dropped a live baby chicken in our midst. The chicken was found to have several talon wounds, but seemed to be otherwise unharmed, and was successfully re-introduced to the mother and siblings after the wounds were treated with antiseptic (as shown in the video below of Jennifer Melcher and Norma Harris tending to the wounds).

Unexpected discoveries

2010-07-12T14:40:00.000-07:00

Today we continued to have good weather as we entered our second to last week of field school, and work progressed in three of our four excavation units. Student crews were switched between different graduate supervisors (and units) today, lasting for the rest of the dig. Excavations continued in the area of our wall-trench structures, though at this point the overall length and configuration of these trenches is still unclear. Early in the morning, however, we were surprised to discover that two of the three charcoal concentrations uncovered late last week in our northern terrace-top unit were actually filled with charred corn cobs (pictured above are Jennifer Melcher and Stephanie Poole working in this unit, along with Matt Tanner's sock feet). All three now appear to have been smudge pits, used for mosquito control, and these three features match another cob pit discovered near the southernmost excavation unit last year, as well as another mass of cobs discovered nearby this year. Cob-filled pits in particular are a common feature of Spanish mission sites in Florida (see closeup at left), reflecting a by-product of surplus corn production, and while their discovery at this site is not surprising, the examples from Escambe are somewhat larger than most, and contain corn from the very end of the First Spanish Period in west Florida. We hope that detailed study of these remarkably well-preserved botanical remains will provide insights into the varieties of corn that were grown at the mission, and whether their origins are local or Mexican. The majority of the cob pit pictured above was able to be removed intact in a block of dirt (see picture to right, with Jennifer Melcher and Amelia Easterling packaging the pit contents for transport), and we should be able to do the same with the other smudge pit (including one that has no visible cobs, and may have been comprised of normal wood).

In the same unit, excavations continued into the substantial handmade brick concentration found in the corner of the unit, and a narrow steel rod was used to probe in the area surrounding this brick concentration in order to discover how far it extended (pictured excavating below are Stephanie Poole, Joe Grinnan, Matt Tanner, and Rachel DeVan). We were surprised to learn that the bricks appear to have been deposited in a narrow (about 1/2 meter wide) trench running roughly NE-SW for a total distance of 15 meters straight. The southern end of the brick-filled trench is located just outside the wall of the substantial wooden barracks structure just south of this area, and runs downslope to a lower location just outside the margins of the principal mission occupation area. The line of bricks do not appear to turn or make a corner at either end, and none are articulated together as if part of a collapsed wall. In fact, the trench fill looks more like broken brick rubble than anything structural.

Upon excavation, we also noted the presence of at least two types of bricks, including one (called a ladrillo, pictured below) typical of First Spanish sites, as well as another thicker type that may also be contemporary with the mission occupation. So far, no artifacts later than the mission occupation have been found within this trench, so at present the possibility still remains that it was dug and deposited before the mission's destruction in 1761 (along with the adjacent smudge pits). While we have far too little information to interpret the original function of this brick-filled trench feature, it might possibly have been some sort of drainage feature (something akin to a French drain), drawing groundwater downslope and away from the wooden foundations of the barracks structure, avoiding rot. Since as yet we cannot even date this feature confidently, any interpretations at this point are pure speculation.

Eight weeks down, two more to go

2010-07-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

Although the first two days of this eighth week of our field season were marked by the Independence Day holiday and yet another rain day, we were treated to clear skies and dry conditions, not to mention heat and humidity, for the rest of the week (pictured above are Brett Briggs and Sydney DePalma sifting in under the blazing afternoon sun). From Wednesday through Friday, student crews have continued to make progress in all excavation units, including existing units as well as several new shallow units designed to trace out the long wall-trench interpreted to be part of the Spanish cavalry barracks. Only two weeks remain for the 2010 field school, and we are focusing on getting as much information as possible during the time that remains.

The photos below show some of our activities and finds this week. Pictured below is Amelia Easterling excavating around a cluster of handmade bricks discovered within the plowzone of our northern unit (possibly associated with the sawmill era).

Tonya Chandler is shown below photo-cleaning a 1x1 meter unit within the larger excavation unit below the bluff slope, where excavations are now suggesting much of the deeper staining below the 18th-century midden deposit is non-cultural.

Below are Brett Briggs and Sydney DePalma mapping the floor of our first excavation unit to be completed down to sterile yellow clay subsoil.

Below is a plan view image showing intersecting wall trenches (see pre-excavation shot from our July 5 post) which have been carefully sliced into sections in order to determine which trench was excavated through the other trench. The vertical trench (bisected to the right) was found to be earlier and deeper than the horizontal trench, still showing toward the top half of the picture above the deeper bisection toward the bottom of the picture.

The two images below show decorated rim sherds from two ceramic vessels. The first is a hand-painted fragment of tin-glazed majolica (Puebla Blue on White), presumably a plate.

The second rim below is of Native American (presumably Apalachee) manufacture, probably from a jar or deep bowl form, with incised decoration and a ticked lip.

The heavy metal object below was found in the plowzone along with artifacts from both sawmill and mission-period artifacts; it's identity and function is presently unknown.

Rain, holidays, and site visits

2010-07-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

Since our last post, excavations at Mission Escambe have been slowed considerably by the combination of rain days and the July 4th holiday today. Despite the bad weather, occasioned in part by the passage of Hurricane Alex far to the south, students have been able to get in a good amount of labwork, plus a couple of days of fieldwork since the 24th.

Continued excavations in the area of as many as three or more overlapping wall-trench structures have proved difficult to interpret, so work is proceeding very slowly using planned bisections as "windows" to see both the horizontal and vertical relationships between intersecting trenches, as well as potential posts within the trench fill (pictured above right is Rachel DeVan excavating one of the new trenches discovered this year). Just south of these structures, students also discovered a line of what appear to be four small postmolds from a possible fence line running east-west (see picture to left). Though there is not enough time left in our summer field season to expand additional units in this area, we hope to make a start at answering some of the many questions we have about this part of the site during the three weeks that remain.

On Thursday of last week, the Colonial Frontiers students and staff visited the Arcadia Mills field school site, and were treated to a tour by principal investigator John Phillips (pictured at right talking to students in the remains of the 19th-century textile mill). Students from both field schools had an opportunity to catch up after many weeks at their respective field sites, and Molino students were able to learn about the research progress made to date at Arcadia (pictured to left are students standing around the deep excavation block associated with a 19th-century residential area of the Arcadia site; Arcadia field director Melissa Timo, who continued the tour at the excavations, is front right). We were all extremely interested to see the progress at Arcadia, and to see the clear differences between Arcadia's upland soil deposits underlain by sand, and the riverine clay deposits underlying Mission Escambe. Students were also intrigued to see the range of 19th-century artifacts shown to them, including intact and nearly-intact patent medicine bottles and decorative molded clay pipe bowls. Many thanks are due to John Phillips, Melissa Timo, and all the other students and supervisors at Arcadia for their hospitality.

On Friday morning, the Arcadia students and staff returned the visit, though repeated downpours during previous days left our covered excavation units filled with water, requiring bailing. The pictures below show scenes from the day, including a video at the end showing the removal of charred corn cobs from a feature discovered the previous week.

Pictured below are views of two excavation blocks inundated by rain, including a view of the groundwater that flowed back into one unit after the plastic was removed (Linda Suzanne Borgen pictured bailing).

Below are images of each of our supervisors explaining their respective excavation units. First, Amelia Easterling discusses her crew's work in the Woodland-era deposits north of the main mission compound.

Next, John Krebs stands on remaining backfill from last year while he explains his crew's excavations along the wall-trench thought to be part of the cavalry barracks at Escambe.

Next, Danielle Dadiego shows Arcadia students her crew's work in the clay-capped multi-structure deposits south of the presumed barracks area.

Below, Patrick Johnson explains his crew's work in the isolated 18th-century midden deposit below the terrace, where a large, deep pit feature has begun to appear over the past days of excavation. The bottom of the unit was still wet from groundwater penetration, with the shovel test in the corner of the unit completely inundated.

Finally, the video below shows Danielle Dadiego carefully removing the in-situ charred corn cobs already photographed, mapped, and fully documented just north of the overlapping structures. By removing the cobs within the matrix of soil that originally surrounded them, we hope to preserve as much information as possible about these fragile objects. In the background, other students can be heard taking down the tarps covering the units at the end of the day.

New crew members, continued progress

2010-06-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

Despite losing Tuesday to rain, on Wednesday and Thursday we welcomed six new students to our crew (picture of all students, staff, and faculty for last half of 2010 field season to right), and were treated to clear weather for continuing fieldwork. All excavation units are making slow and steady progress, though in several cases the more we uncover, the more questions we have. Students are still tracing out the nail-filled wall-trench running east-west across the central area of the site, and as yet no corners have been discovered. To the south, one of two overlapping wall-trenches discovered last year appears now to have a third intersecting wall-trench crossing one of them as well, making interpretation of the complex stratigraphy even more of a challenge. Postholes continue to be excavated in the area of the Deptford occupation at the site, some of which may be part of the same structure that produced a deep post last year. And in our new excavation area below the high terrace on which the mission rests has now been brought down to orange subsoil in one corner of the unit, and has revealed what appears to be a very large excavation pit filled with redeposited sediments from the mission period (pictured above left are Tonya Chandler and Cody Poitevint mapping these deposits). The lenses of soil within this 18th-century feature may be interpreted in a variety of ways, but one possibility being explored is that it may be associated with a barrel-well connected with the mission. Such wells are quite common in Pensacola presidios and other Spanish colonial sites from the era (and indeed persisted in the subsequent British period), so such a find would not be unexpected. More exploration will be needed to determine what this area really is.

Pictured below are Brett Briggs, Linda Geary, Stephanie Poole, and Sydney DePalma working on various phases of excavation and mapping in the area of the overlapping wall-trenches.

Joe Grinnan carefully maps newly-discovered portions of the wall-trench believed to have been part of the cavalry barracks at Mission Escambe.

Chris Dewey maps a bisection of a deep mission-period post in the middle of the Deptford-period structural remains elsewhere in this unit.

John Krebs reviews the total station for incoming students (left to right) Brett Briggs, Jesse Hamilton, Joe Grinnan, and Stephanie Poole. Sydney DePalma and Sara Smiddie in background.

Finally, in the video below is Dr. John Worth giving a lift to one of the chickens that frequent our crew lunches looking for scraps (video recorded by Cody Poitevint).

Features and more

2010-06-21T20:33:00.001-07:00

Today was the last day for six of our students who will be spending the last five weeks of the field school participating in the UWF Maritime Field School (pictured at right is our crew at the end of the day today). Tomorrow their counterparts will be joining us from their first five weeks on the water.

Progress continues to be made in all excavation units, and we are finally beginning to drop down into the mission-period pit features that should eventually help us define structures and activity areas on the site. Two units on either side of the wall trench section discovered last year have now been brought down even with the top of this same post-on-sill wall trench as it runs east and west, and both show evidence that the trench extends in both directions at least as far as these units (one meter in each direction). These trench sections, along with other pit features that appear to be contemporaneous (see photo to left), will be excavated carefully over the next days as we further explore this substantial mission-period structure.

To the south, the units being excavated into the clay-capped overlapping post-in-trench structures are finally beginning to push down into the uppermost occupational layer, and both old and new wall-trench segments are beginning to appear. Though we will have to wait until the precise relationship between the newly-identified trench features and those discovered last year, another small pit feature appeared today--a smudge pit filled with charred corn cobs--corresponding to a similar feature discovered last year barely half a meter away. The cobs (pictured to right) appear to be of the same 8-row variety, and excavation will proceed very delicately in order to preserve these botanical remains for detailed study.

These same units also produced two new types of mission-era ceramics in good context today, pictured below. The first is a ring-base from a porcelain cup, and was likely among the more expensive ceramics available on the colonial frontier.

The second sherd below is a fragment of French faience, which is not uncommon on Spanish colonial sites of this era, but which might reflect exchange with the nearby French colony at Mobile.

Midpoint of 2010 Field School

2010-06-19T10:42:00.001-07:00

Over the past few days our student crews have been making slow but steady progress in their excavation units, even as the weather conditions become more and more oppressive.

On Thursday, one of our recent discoveries, a metal object pictured still in the ground in our Monday post, was X-rayed in the conservation laboratory at the anthropology department at UWF (considerable thanks to Dr. John Bratten and Jake Schidner). We were somewhat surprised to find that enough metal remained in the core of the rusty concretion to show a small hole what now appears to be the tang of a folding straight razor (on the right side of the picture to the left), with the thinnest portion of the blade (left side, facing down) partially corroded away, but still conserving its overall square-ended shape. This would have been a folding knife with a bone or wooden handle attached by a pin through the hole in the tang. Such objects are documented to have been common items in the 18th-century Indian trade, though the one discovered at Escambe might well have belonged to one of the Spaniards living on site as well. They are not well-known archaeologically from this period, so this specimen will be a useful contribution.

All four excavation areas (including a total of six active excavation units) are now well into mission-period (or earlier) deposits, and while we are still piecing together how the various strata and features are related to the various occupational horizons at the site, we continue to add to what we know about the site. An assortment of photos are provided below from the latter half of this fifth week of our field season.

Pictured below is visiting archaeologist Dr. Nick Honerkamp (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga) flat-shoveling in isolated mission-period midden deposits below the primary terrace on which the mission is located. Cody Poitevint and Norma Harris are also pictured.

Image below of Hallie Johnson and Danielle Dadiego operating the GPR unit under the supervision of Sarah Mitchell.

Below is an image showing radar anomalies at multiple depths starting from the surface downward within a 20 by 14 meter block cleared this year. The image was processed by Sarah Mitchell (thanks also to Dr. Victor Thompson for his aid), and shows several linear and rectangular anomalies that are as-yet unidentified. While we know there is a wall-trench structure within the block pictured below, as yet it does not correlate well with any of the anomalies shown. We will be ground-truthing this and other remote sensing survey data over the course of the summer.

Closeup view of 18th-century aqua glass with numerous tiny air bubbles resulting from the handblown manufacture process, characteristic of glass from this period.

Pictured below are Danielle Dadiego, Amelia Easterling, Wayne Abrahamson, and Jennifer Melcher holding the shade tarp aloft while Mark Vadas (on ladder) takes digital photos of the floor of a 2 x 2 m excavation unit (with posthole stains pedestaled and labeled within the unit).

The two images below show two projectile points (likely spearpoints, possibly also used as knives) found in the unit above during the last two days of this past week. Both are made from Tallahatta Quartzite, found far upriver in southern Alabama. The first point may be late Middle Archaic in age (ca. 6,900-3,900 B.C. in calibrated radiocarbon date), making it the oldest artifact yet found on the site (more than 6,000 years old).

The second, smaller point is more likely Early to Middle Woodland in age, and probably dates to the Deptford occupation at the site, which has been radiocarbon dated to approximately 170 B.C. based on charcoal found in a deep post just north of this unit. Scale in centimeters to the right.

Humidity and heat

2010-06-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Today's excavations were undertaken in remarkable humidity and heat, with little to no breeze to cool things down. Nevertheless, progress was made in all excavation areas, though much of this progress involved documentation and careful removal of soil to predetermined elevations, or following the boundaries of cultural strata (pictured to right are Linda Suzanne Borgen and Mark Vadas mapping soil stains associated with deep plow scars).

As the clay cap in our southernmost unit was being removed today, a number of mission-period artifacts were discovered in the dark soil beneath it, all neatly sealed beneath the undisturbed 18th-century clay cap layer. As exemplified in the photos to the left and below, the assortment of mission debris included both Native American and European ceramics, lead shot, and an as-yet unidentified iron object, all embedded in apparently random position within the dark fill, possibly a secondary deposit of debris from elsewhere (though likely nearby). Toward the end of the day, flat-shoveling was halted when a fragment of sheet-brass was discovered and carefully excavated (see video and photos below). We hope to see more of this deposit tomorrow, and make continued progress in other units.

Pictured below is a thick sherd of tin-glazed tableware in-place in the soil matrix.

Pictured in the following video is Allen Wilson excavating the soil around the sheet brass object pictured below.

More traces of the mission village

2010-06-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

Our fourth week of field school began and ended with clear but hot weather, and our summer excavations are proceeding well. Two new test units were opened this week over a post-on-sill wall-trench feature that we believe may belong to the cavalry barracks built in the summer of 1760, and the westernmost unit has already begun to show traces of this same wall-trench above last year's profile view (see traces of yellow clay above wall trench profile in picture above right). Today the first sherd of Spanish olive jar yet found at Mission Escambe was discovered in this unit, displaying the common interior green glaze and finger-ridges from the wheel-turning process used to create it (picture to left).

Excavations in the area of the two superimposed wall-trench structures to the south are continuing to reveal details about the clay cap placed over the buried buildings, including the fact that the thicker and more obvious yellow clay cap layer appears to be overlain in part by a thinner grey-pink clay layer, which also caps a firepit that was previously excavated into the yellow clay (pictured to right are Hallie Johnson and Danielle Dadiego taking a plan view image at the base of one unit). Based on artifacts found within the fill (including Spanish and Apalachee ceramics, and lead shot), all these superimposed layers appear to date to the mid-18th-century mission component at the site, suggesting that considerable energy was expended replacing structures and preparing floors on this particular location, which is situated at one of the the highest points on the gentle ridge that slopes slightly downward and northward through the mission village. As yet we are unsure about the identity of these successive structures, but we hope to find more clues in coming days and weeks.

In the unit located north of the primary mission area along the margins of the prehistoric Woodland-period site, a mission-era pit feature was discovered on Friday. Bisection of this pit revealed a deeper section of the pit which may indicate it was a posthole (pictured above left is Mark Vadas excavating this feature), and also resulted in the discovery of mission-period Spanish and Apalachee artifacts, including the lead-glazed El Morro rim sherd pictured to the right.

On occasion, we discover or confirm additional periods of prehistoric occupation at the site, and the discovery of a single incised shell-tempered potsherd this week demonstrates that there were indeed indigenous Native Americans living at this site during the late prehistoric Mississippi period. The sherd (pictured at left) appears to be part of the Pensacola series, and thus predates the Escambe mission by perhaps two centuries or more.

Finally, today we were all treated to the display of a pair of nesting birds attempting to build a nest inside the hanging backpack of one of our graduate supervisors. The Carolina wrens flitted in and out throughout lunch and the afternoon, bringing twigs and leaves into the cavity. Pictures of the quick birds were hard to get, but a few turned out reasonably well.

Progress

2010-06-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

The first three days of our fourth week of excavations have witnessed good progress toward our summer goals, and student crews are finally all excavating larger units in 18th-century mission deposits. Three 1 x 2m units have been opened adjacent to a 2009 excavation unit with two superimposed wall-trench structures under a clay cap layer, all dating to the mission period (pictured at right around these units are Hallie Johnson, Danielle Dadiego, Linda Geary, Allen Wilson, and Sydney DePalma), and two other 1 x 2m units have been opened on either side of a 2 x 3m excavation block excavated last year through a substantial wall trench running east-west across the heart of the site. Both these excavation areas are designed principally to trace out the size and configuration of these mission structures, and within a few days we should begin to see more evidence of these buildings.

Two other excavations have been opened to the north of the primary mission area, including a 2 x 2m unit placed near a 2009 unit with a deep posthole radiocarbon dated to the 2nd century B.C. (and filled with prehistoric pottery of the Deptford series), as well as another 2 x 2m unit around the shovel test which penetrated an isolated mission-era midden deposit with postholes below the bluff slope north of the mission. While neither of these units have yet reached their goal, both are already beginning to produce artifactual evidence (pictured at left are Linda Suzanne Borgen, Lee Ann Wayland, Mark Vadas, and Amelia Easterling).

In addition, this week we were joined on Tuesday by UWF graduate student Sarah Mitchell, who directed students in running several remote sensing scans of a 20 x 20m area around the substantial wall-trench structure noted above. As seen in the photo to the right, students have now cleared a very broad area in the once thickly-wooded heart of the site, and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and soil resistivity surveys have been conducted. While data are still being processed, a number of interesting anomalies were noted in the field, and several appear consistent in their spatial arrangement using both techniques (see video below). We have high hopes that remote sensing results may guide our excavations to the outside walls of the possible barracks structure already discovered in this area.

Heard in the video below are Sarah Mitchell and John Worth discussing the results of the ongoing GPR survey, with John Krebs and Patrick Johnson operating the unit.

Below are photos of some of the mission-era artifacts discovered on Wednesday. The first two images show both sides of a translucent honey-colored gunspall, used to fire a flintlock musket.

The image below shows a blue glass seed-bead and a tiny fragment of blue on white majolica (tin-glazed ceramic tableware, probably made in Mexico).

The skies finally clear!

2010-06-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

After a holiday week with only two short morning stints in the field, today we were finally able to get in a full day of fieldwork in good weather conditions. Even though much of the day was spent by one crew trying to reconcile the total station to last year's unit locations, the last remaining shovel test was backfilled, and a new unit was staked in using an old but reliable optical transit (see picture to right with Patrick Johnson using the transit to help Tonya Chandler align a corner stake to be hammered in, with Cody Poitevint viewing from a different angle).

In addition, elevations were taken for new units adjacent to one of last year's excavations, re-excavated last week. Prior to the start of excavation, all wall profiles in the 2009 unit were carefully cleaned and examined by this year's field crew (pictured in photo to left are Norma Harris in the excavation unit, with Hallie Johnson, Danielle Dadiego, Sydney DePalma, and Jennifer Melcher looking on during the discussion). We know we have at least two superimposed mission structures in this area, but as yet their identity and size/shape is unknown. We hope that further excavations this year will clarify the complex stratigraphy in this area of the site.

Not all fieldwork is archaeological; the video below shows a large pine snake crossing the dirt road adjacent to a newly-staked unit.

This video shows Norma Harris coaxing escaped goats back into their pen next to our crew's favorite lunch spot.

Rainy weather means labwork

2010-06-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

After another mid-morning rainout today, students returned to the UWF campus to try their hand at rough-sorting artifacts in the archaeology lab. In photo below, lab director Jan Lloyd provides an overview of lab procedures to students, with John Krebs and Jennifer Melcher looking on.

Below, Lee Ann Wayland and Linda Suzanne Borgen begin sifting dried materials previously recovered in the field in order to start rough sorting (see other bags in the box in the foreground).

Tonya Chandler, Hallie Johnson, and Sara Smiddie pictured sifting, below.

Another short rain day

2010-06-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

Today we were frankly lucky to get in even half a day's work, since the clouds built all morning until we were rained out at 11:00. Nevertheless, it was still a productive day, with one crew re-excavating the backfill from one of our 2009 excavation units, another using the total station to re-establish datum positions in order to lay in a new 2x2 meter unit, and the two remaining crews continuing to excavate the remaining shovel tests in the woods. Below are a few videos and images from the day.

Below are Amelia Easterling and Lee Ann Wayland at the total station, with Mark Vadas holding the stadia rod in the background.

Sometimes trees get in the way; shown here is Mark Vadas bending a medium-sized sweetgum out of the way for a total station reading.

In the video below are Hallie Johnson, Sydney DePalma, and Allen Wilson re-excavating the backfilled unit from last year's dig; also shown are Linda Geary and Danielle Dadiego.

The photo below shows Hallie Johnson and Danielle Dadiego working to get the last remnants of backfill from the 2009 unit; also pictured are Allen Wilson, Sydney DePalma, and Linda Geary.

Despite our short day, waterscreening the wall-cleaning from one shovel test produced a nice decorated potsherd that appears to be Wakulla Check Stamped, straddling the line between the Late Woodland and Early Mississippi periods (somewhere around a thousand years ago).

Two weeks down, eight to go

2010-05-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Today students wrapped up the second week of field school under typical summer conditions: sunny, hot, humid, and buggy. Two of our most recent shovel tests to the east of the primary mission deposits were finished and backfilled today, and both produced at least some evidence of mission-era Apalachee pottery, including a very good example of the type Ocmulgee Fields Incised, with remnants of a pendant loop below three parallel lines (photo to right). This type, traditionally associated with Creek Indians in middle and western Georgia and east-central Alabama, was apparently picked up by Apalachee expatriates who lived among the Creek during the period from 1704-1718, and added to the existing assemblage of Apalachee wares.

The two units completed today were both along the easternmost margins of the terrace on which the site is located, and may represent marginal areas of the site. Nevertheless, one test produced evidence for a compacted sandy layer that may represent a structure floor, despite the sparse collection of artifacts from this area (pictured on left at this unit are Mark Vadas, Sydney DePalma, Danielle Dadiego, and Cody Poitevint).

We would also like to take this opportunity to express our considerable gratitude to Boyett's Septic Tank & Vacuum Pumping for the portable toilet and sink setup which they have provided for our student field crew this year. This is a real help to our field school, and makes daily life in the field a lot more convenient.

Exploring

2010-05-28T03:32:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of days, student crews have continued to excavate shovel tests to the north of the primary mission site, filling in the gap between the northernmost 18th-century midden deposit discovered late last week and the main site to the south. Several of these units fall within the modern floodplain, and one was placed in an area near fill deposits that were placed decades ago, extending higher ground as far as the riverbank. As can be seen in the photo to the right (pictured is Tonya Chandler), the uppermost layers of modern fill turned out to be underlain by an original ground surface that is characterized by a dark, organically-rich soil layer that appears to be a buried midden, but which produced only a single tiny shard of olive green glass.

In order to explore this deposit in broader context (and see what the underlying deposits looked like), we moved a few meters away to the edge of an old water-filled channel that had been cut all the way to the river, and cut a fresh profile roughly a couple of meters long along the upper bank (see photo to left; pictured is Jennifer Melcher). This profile showed us that the dark layer was underlain by light-colored sand and clay deposits probably dating to late in the Ice Age (much more recent than the bluff-top deposits where the mission site is located), and in fact these deposits were later found at the bottom of the shovel test above.

On Thursday three new shovel tests were finally set in to the east of the last line of tests excavated last year in the heart of the mission site. Given the extremely thick vegetation in this area, and the undulating topography along the steeper erosional edge of the high terrace above the second bottoms in this area, these units were located using a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit, combined with on-the-ground pacing from and between known shovel tests to the west (pictured at right is Jennifer Melcher taking GPS readings under the shadowy forest canopy). The area is full of poison ivy and mosquitoes, not to mention entangling vines and brush, but the two units were ultimately placed along the eastern edge of the high bluff, with a third located below the bluff in the midst of a vast field of broken bricks associated with the 19th-century steam-powered mill at Molino.

Two of these tests were opened late in the day, and will be explored further on Friday (pictured at left are Hallie Johnson and Morgan Wampler cutting roots).

A number of our recent shovel tests along the gentle slope to the north of the mission site have produced almost no cultural materials, and have come down on dense alluvial clay deposits that are virtually un-screenable without water. Below is a video of Tonya Chandler and Cody Poitevint using the waterscreening station to screen buckets of excavated clay.

Exploring new mission-era deposits

2010-05-26T07:27:00.001-07:00

In the first two days of our second week of field school, we have already begun to explore last week's discovery of mission-era archaeological deposits some 60 meters north of what we previously thought to be the edge of the mission site, and at the foot of the slope below the Molino terrace (see photo of shovel test in progress to right). Below a layer of recent brick and other sawmill-era artifacts, a dark, thick midden layer with 18th-century Native American pottery identical to that found in the mission was discovered, and below this midden deposit (shell and sand tempered brushed sherd to right) was a complicated assortment of soil stains that faded into an underlying soil horizon. This deeper layer now shows possible evidence of multiple posthole stains, possibly associated with a mission-era structure, and more extensive exploration of this area will be undertaken soon.

Other shovel tests in the vicinity have also produced mission-era Native American ceramics, though one somewhat higher along the slope to the south seem to represent disturbed deposits (pictured in photo to left are Norma Harris and Jennifer Melcher inspecting the test, along with Amelia Easterling, Sara Smiddie, and Hallie Johnson; in background are Danielle Dadiego, Linda Suzanne Borgen, and Linda Geary). Further excavations in this unit should allow us to determine whether or not the potsherds found here are associated with any intact occupational layers beneath.

Other tests are also being excavated, including several located in the "second bottoms" of the modern floodplain, which we have yet to test extensively. Though mill period debris is common in higher layers, we have high hopes that there may be underlying deposits relating to the mission era or earlier (pictured in photo to right are Patrick Johnson, Matt Tanner, and Lee Ann Wayland).

The weather has been generally clear and hot through midday, and adapting to these conditions has been quite a challenge for students, who sometimes take a catnap in the shade after lunch before returning to fieldwork (see photo). On Tuesday, however, fast-building clouds ultimately drenched the site (and students) by early afternoon, and so with more clouds on the way (note stormclouds below), we elected to make it a short day and return to dryer conditions.

A great first week

2010-05-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

Today students wrapped up their first week of field school. All in all it was a very productive week, although much of what we learned for the project was negative evidence (in other words, where mission-period occupation was NOT located). Two lines of shovel tests to the west of the mission site discovered last year turned out to contain no evidence for Native American habitation from any period, nor any other traces of Mission San Joseph (pictured at right are Morgan Wampler, Amelia Easterling, Lee Ann Wayland, Sara Smiddie, and Hallie Johnson). It now seems that most of the mission occupation is more concentrated toward the edge of the terrace, overlooking the modern swamp bottom.

Just today, however, we discovered our first positive traces of mission occupation to the north of the site area we tested and explored last year, beneath bricks and other debris from the sawmill era (pictured at left is Linda Geary). Based in part on the 1771 Taitt map, which shows the ruins of the mission site slightly downriver from the bluff landing, this year we have pushed our shovel test lines northward in order to determine whether or not the Escambe pueblo extended along the terrace margin toward the landing. Moreover, since most of the prehistoric Woodland occupation seems to be concentrated in this same area, we hope to discover whether or not this earlier inhabitation of the site was more extensive than previously thought. While most of the tests we have opened in the last few days to the north of the mission site have turned out negative, today one crew encountered what is either a rich buried midden deposit (soil turned dark by organic debris) or some sort of pit feature with mission-era debris, including 18th-century Native American pottery. One sherd (shown here, held by Norma Harris) appears to be red-filmed, and is thus very likely to be associated with Mission Escambe. This shovel test is actually located at the foot of the terrace slope, close to the low "second bottoms" terrace within the modern floodplain, and so at this point it represents a departure from our previous excavations on the high summit of the Molino terrace.

On Monday, what remains of this feature will be excavated in order to learn more about its nature (see dark midden deposit to left; pictured is Becca Booker), and additional shovel tests will be opened just south of this area, where students cleared a line through the thick brush on Friday. In this way, we should be able to determine whether these mission deposits "connect" with the main site upslope and southward, or if they are something else isolated from the core of the Escambe pueblo.

First day of 2010 field school

2010-05-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

The weather was clear, hot, and humid for our first day with a full complement of students (right) in the field at Mission Escambe on Tuesday. Four teams of students with supervisors began work in several areas, including two excavating shovel tests to the immediate west of the mission site, one team clearing a line through the woods for yet another line of shovel tests to the east, and a final team using the total station to set up new datum points and sight in six additional shovel test locations (which we'll be excavating over the next week). Apart from learning about the various techniques of field archaeology (many for the first time), the students experienced firsthand the field conditions that make sunscreen, bugspray, bandaids, and (most of all) water necessary. Below are an assortment of photos and videos of the day's work.

First, our first two shovel test locations, both of which appear to contain only modern debris.

Second, Hallie Johnson and Amelia Easterling gridding out a new shovel test.

Next, John Krebs, Linda Suzanne Borgen, and Becca Booker taking measurements using the total station, with Linda Geary and Allen Wilson holding the prism in the distance.

Cody Poitevint, Danielle Dadiego, and Mark Vadas setting up the photo board for documentation of the shovel test prior to excavation.

Sara Smiddie and Sydney DePalma screening excavated dirt.

Cody Poitevint clipping large roots with Danielle Dadiego looking on, and Tonya Chandler screening.

Hallie Johnson measuring shovel test depths, with Norma Harris looking on and Rachel DeVan in background.

Students lined up at the water cooler; in picture are Linda Suzanne Borgen, Danielle Dadiego, Matt Tanner, Norma Harris, Jennifer Melcher, and Mark Vadas.

Finally, video of Heather Puhl using a machete to cut brush, with Lee Ann Wayland and Patrick Johnson dragging brush out of the woods, and Matt Tanner in the background.

Preparations continue for start of field school next week

2010-05-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Today the supervisory crew for the Pensacola Colonial Frontiers 2010 field school spent their first entire day at the Escambe mission site, and worked many long hours to re-establish the site grid using the total station and previously-mapped datum points from last year's dig. The weather was clear, if a bit hot in the afternoon, though regular breezes kept conditions on the pleasant side overall. Unfortunately, the total station proved remarkably stubborn, and after a morning on the mission site itself, we had to move back to our original site datum (a permanent brass marker with known elevation) and work our way slowly back across an open field toward the site. After many tries, the crew was finally able to re-establish the mapping grid for the site, and we spent the rest of the afternoon working our way toward the mission. Now that this task has been accomplished, we will be able to lay in new shovel test units for next week's start of field school.

On another front, rapid success was experienced in our first attempt to bring water from a flowing artesian well to a location near the edge of the site where we plan to conduct waterscreening for specific samples from the site where fine-screening will be necessary (and which would be virtually impossible with dry-screening the clayey soils). The video below shows the moment when the water finally made its way through several long sections of fire hose and began flowing at the waterscreening location. We are very grateful to the site's owner for his considerable help in bringing water to the site.

Preparing for the 2010 field school

2010-05-01T04:40:00.000-07:00

UWF students and volunteers took to the field again this past April at Mission San Joseph de Escambe in Molino, Florida. Wielding machetes and even a chainsaw, they took advantage of clearer conditions at the beginning of spring growth to do a bit of clearing of thick undergrowth around last year's excavation units. This year, beginning on May 18, we plan to expand on several of last year's units, and so early clearing makes it easier to lay in new units and utilize remote sensing to guide our work once we get started with a full student field crew.

As can be seen in the video below, small-diameter brush was cleared, leaving larger trees such as sweetgum and oak to maintain the forest canopy above. The students added fresh cuttings to the pile originally started by the landowner earlier in the spring, resulting in a truly huge pile of brush (above).

We will begin posting new blog entries as the project gets underway this month, but we also plan to leave last year's blog entries intact, so visitors can get a feel for the process of discovery that led to this year's project.

Summer's end

2009-08-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning the staff and supervisors of the Pensacola Colonial Frontiers 2009 field school joined several volunteers and finished up the last profile map before backfilling the last remaining open excavation unit. While much work remains to be done in the lab, and some additional fieldwork is anticipated during the fall and spring (mostly in preparation for next summer), we would like to take this opportunity to recognize the crew of the 2009 field school, pictured in the photos here. Six of our students spent alternating halves of the summer participating in the UWF underwater field school, and for this reason crew photos were taken for each half.

The complete crew is listed below.

Student crew: Michelle D'Onofrio, Sarah Everhart, Patrick Johnson, Colin Keohane, Jennifer King, John Krebs, Gary MacMullen, Brian Miller, Wendy Morgan, Aubrey Palmer, Roman Sinopoli, John Smith, Helen Welch. Graduate supervisors: Rachel DeVan, Matt Napolitano, Sarah Patterson. Field director: Jennifer Melcher. Principal investigator: John Worth.

The field school was sponsored by the University of West Florida University of West Florida Division of Anthropology and Archaeology, including the Department of Anthropology and the Archaeology Institute. It is important to recognize that the discovery of Mission San Joseph de Escambe was not accomplished in isolation, and in fact builds on considerable earlier work on the Spanish colonial period by UWF archaeologists and their students.

Beyond this, however, we would like to express our tremendous gratitude for the interest and support of the community of Molino, Florida, which has embraced the Colonial Frontiers project with open arms. While it would be impractical to list everyone who expressed interest or visited the site on one or more occasions, or who generously granted permission for archaeological testing on their property, we are particularly thankful to the members of the Molino Mid-County Historical Society, at the April meeting of which the search for Escambe was first presented publicly. We are also grateful to Boyett's Septic Tank & Vacuum Pumping for their generous donation of the use of a portable toilet and sink for our students and crew throughout the field season. Most especially, however, we would like to thank the Marlow, Pope, and Weihenmayer families for their hospitality and support of the project, particularly during its final weeks. Over the course of the summer we made many new friends and shared many good times. We eagerly look forward to new archaeological investigations next year, when we hope to learn even more about the mission community that has lain untouched for so long alongside the Escambia River that bears its name.

Backfilling

2009-08-08T11:24:00.001-07:00

It took a 14-hour work day on Friday for students and staff, but we were able to finish documenting two out of our three open excavations by the time the sun began to drop in the western sky, bringing an official close to the 2009 Pensacola Colonial Frontiers field school at UWF. Students did a great job of finishing what little excavation levels were left, and documenting the exposed profiles of all remaining units, including photography and detailed scale drawings. After multiple photos were taken of each cleaned wall, lines were scribed into the wall showing evident (and sometimes not-so-evident) color variations relating to stratigraphy and natural and cultural soil disturbances (see photo above right), all of which were then carefully drawn, with colors recorded for each division using a Munsell soil color chart (photo to left).

Once each unit was complete, the walls were lined with permeable landscape cloth before the sifted backdirt was manually shoveled back into the same unit from which it came (see video at bottom). Even though it is no small task, this is a traditional ritual of the last day of fieldwork, and signals the wrapup of a tremendously successful 2009 season.

A smaller crew will return early next week to finish the last remaining profile, and backfill the largest of the three excavations we opened this summer. We'll still be posting additional followup blog entries regarding this summer's project, so please stay tuned.

Nearing the end

2009-08-06T20:05:00.001-07:00

Today was our second to last day of field school, and good progress was made in all active excavation units. The "swiss cheese" unit with multiple wall trenches was brought down into sterile subsoil by the end of the day, and produced some good surprises including a number of post impressions at the bases of the trenches, as well as a burned European pipestem, made from molded kaolin clay (see picture to right).

The deep feature in the middle of our northernmost unit finally clarified itself to be a large, deep postmold within a larger posthole pit (picture to left). The fill evidently contained Deptford pottery fragments, making it likely that the post may be from a structure around 2,000 years old. We will want to explore further in this area next year in order to determine whether or not there are other associated posts in this area, and when they date from.

The two adjacent units covering three meters of the large wall trench are still being excavated to subsoil in one corner, but we hope to be able to finish all these units, including photographing and drawing all profiles, before backfilling. It's a lot of dirt to replace, but with a good early start tomorrow, we have high hopes of wrapping things up before the weekend.

Tying up loose ends

2009-08-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

We're now halfway through the last week of our UWF summer field school, and students have been working diligently to wrap up the excavation units that are still open. This is not as easy as it might seem, in part because each of our current units is at least eight times the size of our earlier shovel tests, and also because we are continuing to uncover extraordinarily intricate evidence for architectural features at Mission Escambe, not to mention continuing evidence of earlier occupations.

In our largest excavation block (consisting of a 2 x 2 meter unit and an adjacent 1 x 2 meter unit) we are continuing to follow the large wall trench we discovered by chance in a 50 x 50 cm. shovel test earlier in the dig. The trench is remarkably well-made, and obviously belonged to a substantial structure in the mission, perhaps associated with the cavalry barracks or the mission church. To date students have mapped almost forty wrought iron nails in-place within the trench, virtually all of which seem to be in their original position within the post-on-sill wall foundation. When all the information is combined on a single map, we hope to be able to reconstruct the construction details of this wall with great detail. One amazing find today was a nail still embedded in a piece of iron-encrusted wood, a remnant of the original beam or post into which the nail was hammered some 250 years ago. A knot-hole is still visible in the preserved wood (see photo above right).

Another unit to the south of this unit has not one but two overlapping sets of wall trenches, each of which apparently belonged to a somewhat less-substantial post-in-trench structure. The earlier structure was demolished and capped with gray soil, and the second structure was placed in a slightly different position on top of the earlier one, with its wall trench cutting through the slightly deeper earlier trench. The remains of both of these structures were later capped with a thick layer of orange clay to create a level surface, into which a large fire basin was excavated. Excavating these overlapping wall-trench features has turned out to be an incredibly complicated task, with multiple bisections and partitions of each feature at specific angles in order to maximize our ability to understand the chronological and structural relationships between the trenches. Since the trench is so narrow, it is quite a balancing act to excavate several sections of these trenches at once, leaving the floor looking something like Swiss cheese in the middle of the process (see photo above left).

The third excavation unit turned out to have several possible postholes, including a large, deep feature that is proving to be more difficult to interpret than it originally seemed. Since mission-period artifacts were found in the deeper layers of this unit, some of these features may relate to the mission occupation, though at present their identity and relationship to the rest of the Apalachee village is unclear.

Students were also treated to a visit by UWF President Dr. Judy Bense today (see photo to left, with project field director Jennifer Melcher), whose decades of archaeological work in and around Pensacola literally laid the groundwork for the current UWF archaeology program. She and her colleagues and students have conducted extensive investigations at the three 18th-century Spanish presidios on Pensacola Bay, and as she noted in her comments to the students today, our work at Mission Escambe will build upon this earlier work, providing new details about Pensacola's Spanish colonial heritage to a new generation of students.

New walls, new structures

2009-07-30T18:17:00.001-07:00

We nearly finished two of our open units today, but made some remarkable and completely unexpected discoveries in the third. As seen in the photo on the right, yet another ritual of field archaeology is studying profiles and carefully drawing the stratigraphic layers, lenses, and cultural features in the walls of each finished unit. It is part science and part craft (sometimes it appears more art than anything), but it results in the drawn profile views that will eventually be pivotal in our quest to understand the site. We also take plenty of photographs to accompany these drawings, but the scale drawings are far more accurate, and give us precise measurements to allow us (in this case, for example) to understand the construction features of the building that generated the wall trench our students have just excavated so carefully over the past days. The image on the left is an excellent example of how profile views can show us features of the wall trench that weren't easily visible while the trench was being excavated.

The excavation unit with our earliest deposits also produced yet another important piece of the Apalachee mission puzzle today in the form of a grog-tempered pottery handle, possibly from a pitcher or other European-inspired form. It may be no coincidence that this was found within a few meters of the possible candlestick fragment, and the recovery of these colono wares provides continuing evidence for a classic mission-period ceramic assemblage.

Finally, once the unit with the clay and ash was brought down below the overlying colonial fill deposits, we were somewhat surprised to see not one but at least two overlapping wall trench features, one of which has what appears to be an obvious corner (see photo to left). These wall trenches correspond to now-apparent "dips" in the overlying contact between the ashy deposits and clay mantle, making it likely that the uppermost yellow clay cap layer was deposited on top of the final burned structure, which had "slumped" into the wall trenches below. We can now recognize at least three episodes of activity in this unit, including an earlier building, a later building constructed on top of the first one, and then a final capping episode accompanied by the excavation of basin-shaped hearth near the surface (see photo to right). What is perhaps most amazing about this sequence is the fact that, based on the artifacts found throughout these deposits, they all occurred during the 20-year occupation of the mission. We will spend the next few days carefully excavating and documenting all these features in order to understand them better.

Older and deeper

2009-07-29T16:34:00.000-07:00

We had a good, full day of fieldwork today, following the torrential rains yesterday afternoon. The first order of business was bailing the water from our excavation units, which are carefully covered with plastic and sandbagged each night in order to protect the fragile profiles and features that are beginning to be exposed. This is a common ritual of summer fieldwork in Florida (see video at the bottom of the blog entry).

Students made good progress in all three units. The complex wall trench in our largest unit was nearly completed today, and nearly 20 nails have now been mapped in-place in various positions and depths within the soil stain reflecting the original wooden sill upon which wall posts would have been fastened. Once all the maps and other data are combined and analyzed for this wall trench, we hope to learn a great deal about the original design of the structure we have been excavating here, and of course what its function was for the Escambe mission community.

The confusing clay, ash, and charcoal deposits in a nearby unit are becoming slightly clearer now that the unit has been brought down to a lower elevation. It now appears that the dense clay layer just below the surface in this unit may have been some sort of level floor created on top of an underlying cultural deposit with a very uneven surface (apparently filled with ash and charcoal). Subsequently, a large basin seem to have been excavated through a portion of this clay floor in one area, and the light-colored ash deposits within part of this basin show that it was used as a hearth. All these deposits continue to produce only mission-era artifacts, showing that despite their depth, they apparently all date to the window of time when the mission community was occupied in the mid-18th century. One useful marker for the Apalachee mission occupation was found in the form of a large sherd of grog-tempered cob-marked pottery, known as Jefferson Cob Marked, which was decorated with dried corn-cobs impressed into the surface of the wet clay before firing, as seen in the photo to the above left.

The third excavation unit has also plunged deeper into site deposits along the northern side of the mission-era occupation, and today produced unexpected evidence for what is probably a Late Archaic occupation at the site, dating to the latter part of the period between 1,200 and 3,900 B.C. A complete spearpoint made from Ridge and Valley chert, probably originating in northern Alabama, was uncovered in the deeper portion of this unit, which has also produced evidence for subsequent Woodland Period occupation lasting well into the first millenium A.D. Not only is this spearpoint and the stone from which it was made very rare in Northwest Florida, it marks the oldest artifact yet found at the site we are excavating. While it doesn't relate to the Escambe mission occupation, it's continuing proof for the fact that this site was also frequented by visitors throughout much of prehistory.

Ash, clay, and beads

2009-07-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today the crew was able to get in nearly a whole day of fieldwork before we were all drenched by a fast-moving rainstorm early in the afternoon. We now have three excavation units open at once, and while progress seems a bit slower, we are learning more and more about the site as we can finally see areas larger than our earlier 50 x 50 cm. shovel tests. Progress was made in gradually dissecting and mapping the wall-trench feature in our largest unit (2 x 2 meters), and a new 1 x 2 m. unit opened on Monday is gradually moving down into the mission-era deposits below the root mat. But another unit deeper into the woods is producing both our most perplexing soil deposits and an assortment of new artifacts from the mission village.

As can be seen in the photo to the right, this 1 x 2 m. unit has been brought down on a layer of hard, dense clay which borders a softer area containing ashy deposits, charcoal, and dark soil. Both of these areas are producing 18th-century pottery and other artifacts, suggesting that they may date to the mission era, in contrast to our earlier supposition that the shallow orange clay might have been modern fill deposits. The ashy area of this unit is very close to the shovel test that contained a cob-filled smudge pit and a greenstone discoidal, and if all these features are contemporaneous, this may suggest they are part of some sort of activity area such as a hearth, perhaps inside one of the many Apalachee structures that must have comprised the Escambe village. Further excavation in this unit should provide us with clues to the identity of these deposits.

In addition to many other artifacts, the ashy deposit in this unit produced a small but classic example of red-filmed pottery commonly known as Mission Red Filmed, which is routinely found on 17th-century Apalachee mission sites in the Tallahassee area, and which sometimes appears on pottery vessels made in European forms. The red decoration evidently appeared in the Spanish mission provinces only during the colonial era, and so it provides a good example of native culture change in the context of the mission period. Students also recovered four glass beads from this deposit, including several colors and an elongated type of bead, all of which is consistent with Mission Escambe's mid-18th-century date.

We were also visited today by a new crew from WEAR television, ABC Channel 3 news, and the news feature which appeared on the evening broadcast is posted on the WEAR website.

Architecture and more

2009-07-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today we returned to the site after a rain day and made progress in several excavation units. One shovel test right on the edge of the bluff overlooking the slope down to the Escambia River swamp produced a handful of Spanish majolica sherds of the same type (Puebla Blue on White) along with an assortment of Native American sherds, though a feature stain in the bottom of the test ultimately proved to be a tree root. Another large unit, measuring 1 x 2 meters, was opened in the area of the cob pit discovered last week, and is still being excavated through a cap of modern fill.

Painstaking work in the 2 x 2 meter unit with the east-west wall trench mentioned in previous posts has revealed some remarkable details about the architecture used in the structure, all thanks to the amazing state of preservation of this wall trench. Deeper in the trench, students uncovered a line of seven vertical wrought iron nails still standing upright in the exact center of the trench, evenly spaced between about 8 and 9 inches apart from one another (and extending into the shovel test unit excavated last week, where two more were mapped in place). The nails were likely used to fix vertical wooden posts in place on top of the wood sill at the base of the wall trench, and remained in-place as the structure foundation rotted after the 1761 destruction of the mission. Other nearby nails in other positions may relate to other architectural features of the wall, or might simply have fallen into the trench as the above-ground elements of the wall decomposed (or perhaps as the structure burned in the Creek raid). This wall trench is turning out to be an extremely important find, in part due to its extraordinary preservation.

Both the wall-trench and surface deposits on both sides of the wall also produced a range of 18th-century artifacts from the mission, including both Spanish and Native American ceramics. More artifacts seem to have been present north of the wall than south of it, and this fact, combined with the presence of an extremely crisp boundary between the wall-trench and the floor deposits on the north side (compared with a more diffuse boundary to the south) suggest that the protected interior of the building may have been on the north side. Only further excavations will allow us to confirm or deny this preliminary interpretation, but once we are able to distinguish the interior and exterior ground surfaces, we may learn a great deal about activity areas within the mission village, and perhaps also the identity of the residents of this particular structure, and its function.

One unexpected find was a fragment of brass jewelry with a faceted green glass stone (see photo with front and back views). Similar items were found at the contemporaneous Santa Rosa presidio, some of which have been interpreted as cufflinks. Whether this item was part of a Spanish officer's uniform, a Native American trade item, or some other object associated with the mission, it nonetheless demonstrates yet another link with the 18th-century Spanish garrisons along the coast, giving us additional support for the conclusion that this is indeed Mission San Joseph.

Spanish ceramics and wall trenches

2009-07-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

Today our largest excavation unit to date (2 x 2 m.) was brought down on top of the wall-trench that we intersected with the 50 x 50 cm. shovel test last week. Ground penetrating radar survey in this area indicated that the wall-trench might extend both east and west from the original unit, and this proved to be accurate, as can be seen in the photo to the right (the trench contains slightly lighter-colored fill along with yellow-gray clay subsoil). The trench appears to have been excavated precisely east-west, and is roughly half a meter in width. At this stage, we will need to take particular care in excavating the trench and surrounding sediments, so that we can learn as much as possible about the structure it belonged to (such as which side was inside and which was outside, unless it turns out to be an interior partition wall).

In this same unit we were also pleased to find not one but three varieties of 18th-century Spanish ceramics, including two decorated types of tin-glazed majolica made in Mexico (Abo Polychrome and Puebla Blue on White, shown to left) as well as a sherd of lead-glazed El Morro ware. All three of these types overlap during the first half of the 18th century, precisely during the period of Mission Escambe's initial occupation. Perhaps even more than many of our earlier finds, these items provide sound confirmation of both the date and the clear Spanish association of the Native American village we have discovered. Indeed, the high frequency of European items we are finding in direct association with the wall-trench structure we are exploring makes it likely that it was one of the primary mission buildings, such as the church or friary, or perhaps a residence for members of the cavalry garrison stationed there about 1760. In any case, it places resident Spaniards and Native Americans in the same village, and exactly in the predicted location for Mission San Joseph de Escambe along its namesake river, the Escambia.

Still more

2009-07-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

Today one of our crews opened a 2 meter by 2 meter unit around the shovel test with the wall-trench structure corner, with the goal of exploring this architectural feature in greater detail, and obtaining a larger sample of the artifacts associated with it. Due to its larger size, the unit is proceeding slowly using the flat-shoveling technique bring it down in even, 10 cm. levels (photo to right). By the end of the day, only the first level had been completed, bringing the unit down through the upper root mat and humus, but we have already begun to find more evidence of activities at the Escambe mission.

In addition to a good number of Native American sherds, including several of the type Ocmulgee Fields Incised, a white glass seed bead was found, virtually identical with the two found in a shovel test not far away during mid-June. More significantly, however, we recovered a stamped lead bale seal (photo to left, uncleaned) with the letter "K" above a line, and the number "653" below the line, and other letters around the outside on the top half (largely truncated by the edge of the seal). Such seals are thought to have been used to seal bales or bundles of cloth or other trade goods, and they are not uncommon on 18th-century sites in Southeastern North America, particularly on those associated with Native American trading. This one is a particularly well-preserved example, and might provide enough information to allow it to be dated more precisely, or associated with a particular merchant or manufacturer.

Other crews worked in additional tests along the margins of the site today, but we plan to focus on the mission village itself in the final three weeks of field school. We have only just begun our more extensive excavations into the newly-identified mission deposits, so we anticipate more to report in future days.

More finds

2009-07-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

We had another exciting day today, with several unexpected discoveries, and further confirmation of the wall-trench structure first identified yesterday. In a shovel test just 20 meters from that structure's corner, what first appeared to be a simple concentration of charred wood (which might have been anything from a burned tree stump to a charred post) ultimately turned out to be what is known as a "cob pit," filled with large numbers of charred corn cobs, several of which were nearly intact (see photo to right). These pits are very common on Spanish missions across northern Florida, and appear to have been used as smudge pits to generate smoke for mosquito control in and around houses in the village. The cobs were placed in small subsurface pits with constricted mouths, where they could smolder slowly and generate enough smoke to keep bugs away. Importantly, the cobs found at our site is of the 8-row variety, consistent with maize grown by North American Indians during this period (and much, much smaller than modern hybrid varieties). Further study should tell us more details about the corn grown at the Escambe mission.

In the same unit, and at about the same level, students found a remarkably well-made ground-stone discoidal made from greenstone, a type of stone probably originating in the Alabama Piedmont region, well over 100 miles away. This type of object, generally thought to be a Native American gaming piece, might date to the late prehistoric Pensacola culture, or it might instead be an Apalachee item from the mission period. Since people were living at this site during both periods, either option is possible, though further exploration at the site may tell us more about the context of the object, and what period it belongs to. The same unit produced a tiny sherd of plain Spanish majolica.

In the adjacent shovel test, students continued to explore the wall-trench structure discovered yesterday, which now appears to be a post-on-sill construction type that was commonly used on French colonial sites, though it has also been documented in Pensacola's Spanish presidios. An intriguing feature of the structure we have identified at the Escambe mission is the apparent presence of the remains of some sort of floor structure on the inside of the building corner. A number of wrought-iron nails were found lying in place in association with this floor, and careful excavation of this complex set of features is still proceeding. We definitely plan to conduct additional excavations in this area in order to learn more about the identity of this structure and what role it played in the mission community.

Other students continued to work on the larger excavation unit opened above the radar anomaly described in earlier posts, where they were able to learn how to shovel-shave, and how to draw larger plan-view maps using rulers and a plumb-bob (see photo). While some Native American ceramics and tiny flakes of chert have appeared in this unit, the presence of sheet metal and other modern artifacts may indicate that the anomaly could be related to the 20th-century dairy barn in this vicinity. In any case, only further excavation will tell the tale.

And sometimes, we get very lucky

2009-07-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

In recent days we've been working on filling in some of the gaps in our shovel test survey in the wooded area of the survey area, and since we're digging our shovel tests on a 20-meter interval, on any given day there is a fairly high priority that we'll place a shovel test right in-between anything important. Today however, we got lucky.

In one of our shovel tests we detected some odd soil colorations with linear boundaries, so we decided to excavate them carefully, and have discovered what appears to be the corner of a wall trench structure. While it is somewhat difficult to see in the photo the area of lighter colored soil in the center of the pit is the wall trench, and this lighter soil extends into the southeastern corner of the shovel test. On the western edge is a semi-circular darker area which is likely the corner post, and along the southern edge of the unit is a somewhat more dense area of soil which is likely the interior of the structure and may be related to a dirt floor.

As we excavated this we turned up a very nice square hand-wrought nail (above), which strengthened our hypothesis that these stains in the soil were structural remnants, and furthermore that the structure was almost certainly constructed using European-style construction techniques (as opposed to Native American). Based on these initial results, it appears we may have gotten very lucky in placing this shovel test precisely in the corner of one of the buildings of the mission. Many times, archaeologists search for days and weeks to find wall lines and trace them out to find building corners, but we appear to have found a corner right at the start. We'll be exploring this structure further in coming days.

Additionally, we found some more pieces of Native American ceramic fragments which also support our belief that we have likely located the remains of Mission Escambe. The rim fragment below is a type known as Ocmulgee Fields which was being produced by the Apalachee Indians around the time the mission was occupied.

Bigger and better

2009-07-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

With less than a month left in this summer's field school, we're making good progress in confirming and defining the mission-period occupation that we first began to discover in shovel tests late in June. Four shovel tests have been excavated so far in the transects that were cleared through the woods last week, and all but one produced clear evidence of Native American ceramics dating to the right time period. The most recent, excavated today, produced a sherd of a type of ceramics commonly associated with Creek Indians, commonly known as Chattahoochee Brushed (see photo), decorated with bundles of pine straw. This type only begins to appear in the Pensacola area during the eighteenth century in association with other mission-era ceramics, and may well have been made by Apalachee Indians who grew up in the Creek country before 1718, or by Creeks who married into the Apalachee community from Creek settlements north along the Escambia.

In addition, this same excavation produced what may be our best indicator for the mission yet: a fragment of what may be a crude Native-made candlestick, called Colono Ware by archaeologists in recognition of Native American manufacture in European-inspired forms (see photo). These wares are generally thought to have been made by mission Indians for the use of resident Europeans, which is consistent with the presence of a Franciscan missionary and as many as 16 Spanish cavalry soldiers at Escambe.

Using the Ground Penetrating Radar data obtained last week, we have also set in a new, larger excavation unit measuring 1 by 2 meters in the area of a subsurface disturbance that might be related to the mission-period occupation. When this unit is brought down to the level of this anomaly, we hope to discover whether it is a cultural feature such as a firepit or hearth, or perhaps just some natural disturbance. In either case, we should obtain a larger sample of mission pottery from this unit, which should give us better evidence about the time period and cultures involved at this site.

In sum, we now have a total of 17 contiguous shovel tests that have produced evidence for Native American ceramics in the area we are currently working in, making a site measuring at least 120 meters by 80 meters, and occupying the highest original ground surface along the river margin of the terrace we have been surveying. Most of the ceramics appear to date to the mission period, and are consistent with Apalachee pottery from this period. At this point, evidence is rapidly building that we may well have discovered the site of Mission San Joseph de Escambe. Further testing over the next few weeks will be designed to confirm this tentative identification, and begin the archaeological exploration of this site.

Zeroing in?

2009-07-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

Over the past week, the crew has made progress on several fronts, though we lost a full day and a half of work to the rainy weather on Monday and Tuesday. As noted in our last post, we were intrigued by several underground anomalies discovered using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) equipment last Thursday, and since these anomalies were very close to a shovel test with a good amount of mission-period Native American ceramics, we decided to conduct additional remote sensing over this area. Dr. Thompson returned this week and conducted two sets of tests in a 20 meter by 20 meter area, using not just GPR but also soil resistivity equipment within a carefully-arranged grid pattern (see photo to right, and video below). Once the data is processed, both these surveys should provide more detailed information about the soil characteristics below ground in the 20 x 20 m. block around the positive shovel test, including information about subsurface pits, layers, and larger objects (revealed using radar data) as well as the relative resistivity of the soil to electrical currents, based on factors such as moisture and organic content. Based on these results, we hope to "ground-truth" one or more anomalies in order to see what they are. With any luck, we may encounter soil disturbances associated with mission-village structures or activity areas, though many may turn out to be natural.

At the same time, one crew has been continuing to excavate shovel tests farther south along the river bluff in an area where the river begins to veer away from the high ground we have been focusing our search on, while other crews have continued to test in the area where we have been finding quite a bit of mission-period Native American ceramics. The total absence of any evidence of Native American occupation to the south is in stark contrast to our continued testing in the area of our previous discoveries, where we now have a total of 8 contiguous shovel tests with traces of what we believe is probably mission-era occupation. Just today we excavated one of the most productive shovel tests in this area, with more than a few potsherds bearing characteristics in common with that documented mid-18th-century Apalachee Indians in the area of Pensacola and Mobile Bays.

Since our positive shovel tests are all clustered along the edge of a patch of woods that we have not yet surveyed (and which lies directly between both concentrations of mission-period Native American pottery we have discovered), students have also spent much of this week clearing transects through the brush in order to lay in new shovel tests. This is slow and tedious work, and the combination of heat and poison ivy has been a challenge. Nevertheless, tomorrow we should be able to begin testing in this area, which may turn out to be just as productive as the field to the south.

Applying some modern technology

2009-07-02T12:42:00.001-07:00

Today we were fortunate to have a visit by Dr. Victor Thompson, also of the UWF Anthropology Department, who gave a demonstration of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) equipment at our field school site, as well as an overview of a range of shallow geophysical techniques including soil resistivity and gradiometer survey. We were able to conduct a few limited transect surveys in the area where we have been finding the most mission-period artifacts on the bluff summit, and we were pleased to discover several areas of disturbed subsurface soil, at least one of which is fairly broad (see image below). It's impossible to say what the cause of these radar "anomalies" are until we check them directly, but at the very least we know something is creating a fairly distinctive signature underground in this area.

The students also worked on more brush clearing after finishing up three open shovel tests for the longer holiday weekend.

Finding a few more hints

2009-06-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

Today we found a few more promising signs of our mission. One shovel test yielded more fragments of Native American ceramics, one of which is known as Walnut Roughened, tempered with crushed shell and lightly brushed on the surface. This pottery type was originally common among Creek Indians in the interior of Alabama and Georgia, particularly during the period when many Apalachee Indians lived among the Creeks before descending to Pensacola in 1718. It is also commonly found at Pensacola's Santa Rosa presidio during the time period of the Escambe mission. Mission-era ceramics have now been found in a number of shovel tests in a cluster along the river bluff, and may well represent part of the Apalachee community there until its destruction in 1761.

In two of these same tests (and one earlier test in the same area), we also found some small circular lead objects which have us somewhat puzzled as to their identity (a bent example is shown in the photo to the right). They might relate to later occupation at the site, but given their association with the Native American ceramics noted above, they may relate to the mission occupation.

A few of our shovel tests were placed in areas capped with clay fill excavated from nearby ponds and used to level the original ground surface many years ago. While most of these have only a small layer of fill, a few have considerably more. One shovel test today penetrated a total of two feet of fill before reaching the original ground surface, and ended up even deeper after pushing all the way down to the original clay subsoil. It was waist-deep before backfilling (see photo to left), and was a real challenge to excavate by hand at the very bottom while hanging head-first over the side.

We also encountered some more of the local indigenous wildlife today!

Definite signs

2009-06-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

The last few days in the field have been exciting, and not just because the weather is at least a little cooler, with occasional afternoon clouds and showers. Yesterday we found our second concentration of the mission-era occupational debris along the river bluff, including several small Native American sherds that appear 18th-century, several heavily-patinated lead shot pellets consistent with types found at Spanish presidios in the same period, olive-green bottle glass fragments, and other nondescript items including a melted lump of copper or brass. These traces were found more than a hundred meters away from the first concentration we located last week, but were also situated on a spot of level high ground overlooking the river floodplain. We are still testing in this area to see how large the concentration may be. The colonial deposits are completely covered by a layer of fill that was excavated from a nearby pond and used to level the ground many years ago, but by careful excavation and documentation, we are able to reconstruct the original ground surface.

Even more definitive evidence was found today for the prehistoric occupation noted in our last entry. A shovel test today produced a substantial collection of Woodland-era pottery sherds, many of them larger and several of them decorated with designs that help us assign a date to the occupation in this area, which is lower along the slope below the bluff summit, and closer to the swamp bottom. Pottery types found include Swift Creek Complicated Stamped, sand-tempered check stamped (Wakulla or possibly Deptford types), and a folded, thickened rim with punctations that is probably associated with the Weeden Island culture. All these cultures date to the first millenium A.D., helping us pin down more precise time periods when people were living along this edge of the floodplain. There are many more shovel tests to dig in this vicinity, most in the woods, and so we don't yet know how large this prehistoric site is.

The students were also treated to some riverside waterscreening today, due to the recovery of several buckets full of dense, sticky clay from the bases of several shovel tests. In order to save time sifting this material, we set up an impromptu waterscreening station at the water's edge, where water was poured in buckets over the screens. Even though it was a time-saver, it still took a lot of effort, though standing in the water was at least somewhat refreshing (see video below).

Pushing into prehistory

2009-06-22T14:44:00.001-07:00

In the midst of our continuing heat wave (temperatures hovered around 100 degrees today), the crew made good progress today, pushing into the woods and all the way to the slope of the bluff overlooking the swamp bottom. Machete work from last week made it possible to sink a pair of shovel tests in and at the edge of the woods, in addition to another one nearby along the edge of the slope in the open.

We were pleased to find that two of the tests produced a number of Native American potsherds, though in both cases these pottery fragments were extremely small and eroded, with only one possible stamped design remnant, and a single rim fragment. From what we were able to tell, however, these sherds appear unlike the ones found last week in association with the glass beads, and instead probably date to the prehistoric period, probably the Woodland era, dating sometime between perhaps 1,000 and 2,500 years ago. It's impossible to say for sure with such limited evidence at present, but it appears that we have finally found evidence for prehistoric occupation in our survey area. Though it was by no means unexpected (not to have found prehistoric debris in such a prime riverside location would have been frankly surprising), it's nonetheless nice to be finding positive evidence in our shovel tests on a day with such intense heat and humidity.

Another crew spent the day mapping in new locations for tests farther south along the bluff edge, where we hope to begin excavations tomorrow.

Gaining some momentum

2009-06-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

In spite of the oppressive heat and humidity Northwest Florida has been receiving over the last several days, our crews are starting to pick up some speed as we move our way toward the river and along the bluff edge. In fact one of our crews (right) completed two shovel tests today, for the first time this field season.

In virtually all our shovel tests, we continue to find abundant evidence for human activity within the last century and a half, but colonial-era debris is still sparse in this area. We may be dealing with a dispersed settlement pattern for the Escambe mission community, which might only have comprised less than a dozen Apalache houses separated from one another by as much as fifty or more meters, meaning each positive shovel test may be surrounded by a lot of negative ones. We've still only covered a small fraction of the search area, so we may still find a village center with more abundant residential debris from the 1750s.

As we move toward the water we also move into the woods, where the growth is very thick. One team today (left) spent most of their day trying to beat the dense vegetation along the edge of the forest into submission so that they could continue to put in shovel tests along one of the transects.

In the video below, one of our field school students demonstrates the proper way to wield a machete.

New clues

2009-06-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

Despite relentless heat over the past days in the field (a local thermometer measured over 94 degrees this afternoon, and there was little cloud cover or breezes), we are making great progress in expanding our map grid and laying in new shovel tests closer and closer to the bluff edge overlooking the river floodplain. Students have been working hard and honing their new skills in excavation, sifting, and mapping, not to mention equipment maintenance and repair along the way.

Today we made a very promising discovery in a shovel test located in a level area near the edge of the bluff. Not only did we find half a dozen Native American potsherds, several of which display characteristics consistent with 18th-century Apalachee Indian pottery known from previous Spanish presidio excavations near Pensacola, but in the same unit we found not one but two tiny white glass seed beads, commonly found as trade goods on sites of this period. While these finds are not definitive evidence that we are entering the outskirts of the San Joseph de Escambe mission village, they certainly give us hope that we are moving in the right direction. Tomorrow and over the course of the next few days, we should be able to open up a number of additional testpits in this area, providing a larger sample that may help confirm the age and identity of these early finds.

Patience is a virtue in archaeology

2009-06-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

Archaeology can often be long days of finding very little, and the field school students are learning this first hand. We did make some more progress today, finding one piece of alkaline glazed stoneware in one of our shovel tests. Even with unproductive shovel tests, however, we're gradually gathering the data we need to put together a picture of where people lived and discarded their trash at many different times in the past alongside the river, and with a little luck, we'll find evidence for the Escambe mission site among all the other occupation periods.

Mostly the crew battled intense heat, humidity, and sun today, and one of the crews worked their way towards the river, while having to brave thick vegetation, spiders and bugs, and high water since the river is still up.

While most of our site is relatively open, as you move towards the river-bottom, the brush gets quite a bit thicker as you can see in this video!

We are also very grateful today for the portable restroom generously provided by Boyett's for our field school...from the students and staff, thanks very much!

Picking up speed and finding some clues

2009-06-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

Today was a great day for the colonial frontiers field school. It was a beautiful day with hardly a cloud in the sky and the students were energetic after the weekend. We've picked up the pace already this week by completing three shovel tests today, most of which were outside of the worst of the soil disturbances caused by a train derailment years ago.

We also found the first indication of the Native American population we're looking for in the form of a small piece of eroded sand tempered pottery. It could be from any one of several time periods, including the Apalachee of the Spanish era, so we'll have to wait until we find comparable examples with some kind of surface decorations to know more.

So far, all our undisturbed shovel tests lack any evidence of a plowzone, which suggests that much of this location may never have been farmed, accounting for the general lack of surface finds over the years. The good news is that if and when we locate the buried remains of Native American or Spanish structures or activity areas, their state of preservation may be far better than normal.

Another couple of pieces of brown salt-glazed stoneware were found today on the surface near the river, matching others we found in surface collections overlooking the river last week, so we are pushing the shovel test lines towards the river over the next couple of days looking for some sort of definitive signature of our lost Spanish mission.

What a difference a day of rain makes

2009-06-04T14:48:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's rainout we were eager to get back to the site, however the site we came back to looked little like the site we had left on Wednesday morning. Lets just say things were wet; very, very wet!

In spite of intermittent rain showers, we did manage to finish up two of the shovel tests.

One shovel test was capped by the same fill as several of the other shovel tests, but under the fill, the original soil was intact, and the students found a tiny piece of whiteware or pearlware while digging through soil

which was far less than ideal (in fact it had the consistency of half-melted ice cream). They were good sports about it, however.

Though we have yet to uncover any further evidence of the mission so far, the field school students are definitely getting their first taste of practical archaeology: being wet, hot and muddy!

Rain day

2009-06-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

Today was a very short day, due to the line of rainstorms that moved in off the Gulf and reached our site by mid-morning. We've now got teams working on four shovel tests, including the feature identified yesterday (so far no conclusions as to what it is). But we had to cover the units and run for the vehicles today, so we're hoping for better weather tomorrow.

The archaeologists have arrived

2009-06-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Colonial Frontiers Project officially kicked off yesterday with the arrival of nine first-time field school students. The day started with some general maintenance and further establishment of the grid.

We started out putting three shovel tests in the ground relatively close to our datum point. These shovel tests were located predominantly in or near fill which was brought in following a railroad derailment in the area during the 1990s. This meant that one of the shovel tests was completely fill dirt, while another was highly disturbed, though it appears that there may be some intact deposits located under the fill.

Despite this, the day did bring us the first possible evidence of the earliest European settlements in the area. In the moderately disturbed shovel test, we recovered a piece of Brown Salt Glazed Stoneware which dates to the 18th century. Since its production pre-dates 1775, it is either our first indication of the initial British Period plantation activity in this stretch of the Escambia River, or possibly the first evidence for the First Spanish mission community we are searching for.

In another shovel test to the north we found our first feature at the end of day one. We documented it and will be excavating it today. Also found in this test pit were some fragments of free-blown olive green glass, also possibly from the colonial period. All these are tantalizing signs of the missing chapters of early colonial history in this region, but much more work remains.

Field School begins tomorrow

2009-06-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

The Pensacola Colonial Frontiers project will shift into high gear tomorrow with the first day of fieldwork with our full complement of students. The graduate supervisors and staff spent Friday setting up the project mapping grid and establishing benchmarks for horizontal and vertical control, and excavated the first shovel test on the site. We confirmed that at least part of the survey area may never have been plowed, which will be a real plus if we are able to find intact remains of structures or activity areas from the colonial era, or any other period for that matter. After months and months of historical research, the search for the 18th-century missions outside Spanish Pensacola is finally moving into the archaeological phase.

Coming Soon

2009-05-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

One of the University of West Florida field schools this summer will be focusing on looking for the Missions and outlying settlements related to the series of colonial settlements in Pensacola from the 17th through the 18th centuries.
Field school kicks off on June 1st, check back for updates about what we are doing and what we have found.