Sunday, May 23, 2010

End of Week 2: Building an Outbuilding

As week two of our summer's excavations draws to a close, our progress is very encouraging. Eight days of digging, eight units excavated, and one outbuilding almost defined. Much like our first week, our work was accomplished only with the help of a number of volunteers from Boston and Dedham. Our eight units have clarified definitively the positions and alignment of two of the outbuilding's walls. Furthermore, we are reasonably certain that we've also located the final two walls, but we'd like to expand two of our units a bit further before we can feel comfortable saying we've sorted out the feature's dimensions. Check out the image below to see where we've dug and the tentative outline of the outbuilding.


Above: map showing the units excavated this season (in green), the hypothesized outline of the outbuilding (shown as a red line), and the feature's proximity to the Fairbanks House (outlined in gray)

One we work a bit more to identify the foundations of the outbuilding, we will place a unit where we believe the center of the structure to be. This will help us to determine if the building was subdivided in any way. The final step in the investigation of the outbuilding will be to remove a portion of the cobble floor to see if evidence of a previous structure exists underneath.

Below: Alex and Shemi dig with Tom Clinton, director of the Dedham Youth Commission (left); Oskar looks on as Nason examines some ceramic fragments (right)

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