Exciting finds from Pig Point and London Town

Written by staff member Stephanie Sperling; Photos by volunteer Barry Gay:

Two bottles found in the pit; circa 1880 (left)
and circa 1680 (right)

 For those of you who missed Dig Day at London Town last Saturday, let me tell you about two of our really interesting finds.  First, as field director Shawn and former intern Mark (making a guest appearance for dig day) dug through the deep pit behind Rumney's Tavern, they came across a soil horizon that contained two large bottle fragments.  Oddly enough, one dated to the late nineteenth century while the other dated to the late seventeenth century!  Finding these two bottles about nine feet below the ground surface means that the pit must have been filled in sometime around 1880, but how did an intact bottle neck from 200 years earlier also end up there?  Right now, Dr. Al's working theory is that this might have been a brick-lined colonial well robbed out in the 1880s.



Shawn and Mark measure their excavation depth in the deep pit



Revolutionary War pewter button from
London Town cast with the letters "USA"

Erin also found a really neat Revolutionary War-period button in the screen.  This pewter button is in remarkably good shape considering its age and that it came from the plow zone (we often find degraded, crumbling pewter resulting from centuries spent in the harsh London Town soil).  This particular button was cast with the letters "USA" on the front and dates to the late 1770s or early 1780s.  This style was typical of George Washington's Continental Line infantry and was found in a unit dug just north of Rumney's Tavern.

Middle Woodland period pipe from Pig Point

We continue to find amazing artifacts this season at Pig Point.  Last week, we found a highly unusual pipe fragment in Middle Woodland context in the large midden.  This striking pipe bowl has incised rectangles and squares above several horizontal lines, making it the most elaborately decorated pipe fragment yet found at the site.  Interestingly, it looks very similar to a Middle Woodland pipe found at the Abbott Farm site near Trenton, NJ.  Pig Point has been called a "sister site" to Abbott Farm for several reasons.  Both are located in similar riverine settings and each has contributed greatly to the knowledge of regional prehistory.  Also, both sites are deeply stratified and seem to have particularly interesting Middle Woodland components.



Middle Archaic hearth in profile; note the debitage
and fire-cracked rock scattered around it



Finally, I am thrilled to report we just got a radiocarbon date back from a deep hearth feature discovered in early May.  The charcoal recovered from this ancient firepit produced a calibrated date of 4560-4460 BC!  That means this was used sometime about 6400-6500 years ago, placing it squarely in the Middle Archaic time period.  This hearth was found under a dense layer of debitage and worked flakes about 2.5 feet below the ground surface, and you can see in the picture that it plunged over a foot deep.  This is our first Middle Archaic feature at the site, further proving that people have been living at Pig Point for thousands of years.