Roads in the Woods

Archaeology and Displaced Communities: Farmsteads

          Work this week finds us once again deep in the woods of eastern Virginia, picking through the remains of an old farmstead. Tumble-down chimneys and leaf-blanketed cellars of these lost farms dot neighboring ridges. Steps without churches adjoin abandoned cemeteries and graves are reduced to clustered depressions, their occupants disinterred seventy years hence.

There are many famous examples of people whose homes and communities have been suddenly erased in the name of progress: the reservoir towns of the TVA and the "hollows" of what became Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the African American community of Seneca Village enveloped by New York's Central Park and, as here, the hundreds of communities that vanished with the growth of American military bases.

Farmhouse site with cellar at upper center.

          Today's site is typical, a small farm built atop a ridge in the late 1800s. To reach it, we drive a tangle of gravel roads through fields and woods. The route is punctuated with firing ranges and mock battlefields strewn with forlorn target vehicles. This landscape of brutal utility alternates with one of broad fields and rolling tracts of woodland. True, forest and meadow alike are pocked by craters, blasts fired in preparation for Normandy and Hue, Desert Storm and Baghdad; but this tortured earth also explodes with beauty. A hundred species of wildflower rush to colonize the fresh soil. Animals abound as well amid this continual regeneration and deer and squirrel, groundhog, beaver, fox, turtle and many others make regular appearances. It is a strange environment and one far removed from that of the farming communities that existed here a few generations ago.

          Our farmstead lies along an old road hemmed in by sweet gum, oak, and poplar. The footprint of the house survives as a shallow, square cellar in a long rectangle of stone piers. A rocky mound to the east is all that remains of a fallen chimney. Behind the house, a square footing of field stone marks an outbuilding, perhaps a kitchen.  A cement-parged foundation to the east, probably a garage or shed, opens two bays toward the house.  Southwest across the road, a gaping hole marks a vanished ice house, once 15 feet square and as deep or more. The walls slump in now, making it seem twice the size, while a thick, soft bottom of leaf litter lends mysterious depth.  A few more rectangular depressions and the twisted wreckage of old, standing-seam metal roof are scattered nearby.

Here and there, the debris of daily life peaks up amid a lush growth of oak seedlings and fruiting paw paws: an enamel chamberpot, a brown and white gallon jug, a bottle, a scrap of shoe leather studded with copper tacks. This land was all in fields the last time the vanished door closed. It has grown up and been logged at least once since, judging by the trees and the ragged ravines eroded into the surrounding slopes. The house, on its rough stone piers, was of frame construction with wooden siding and tin roof. Lengths of semi-circular gutter, with twisted wire hangers and narrow downspouts still intact, crunch beneath the leaves around the ice-house and home.

          We parked our van in a little turnaround beside the road, just in front of the home site with its gnarled oak.  Massive of limb, it stood surly as the apple trees in The Wizard of Oz, as a coworker observed. We soon set about pulling a measuring tape trough the trees and brush, threading it along a path formed with the aid of machetes and compass. These baselines form the axes of a grid encompassing the site. Between these axes, we pace off fifteen-meter intervals. At each interval we mark the spot for a shovel test pit with a length of yellow tape. A 'shovel test' is more-or-less what it sounds like, a hole dug into the ground the width of the spade and as deep as needed to reach subsoil. 'Sub' is the sterile, geological level that predates Native and European presence. We shovel the soil from each into a shaker screen, and shake and sift with hands to reveal bits of everyday life. The screen is a simple wooden frame, 3 1/2 by 2 feet and four inches deep, with two handles at one end and a U-shaped leg of bent steel conduit that pivots on bolts at the other. Across the bottom, a piece of 1/4" wire mesh is stretched taught and anchored with batting or steel strips and screws.

          Our shovel tests here require two forms- one in detail for 'positives' and a very schematic one for 'negatives'. It has been the general rule on these base projects that several of the latter will fill up before one of the former feels the scratch of a pencil. The parcels we survey are large- in the hundreds of acres- and the likely human occupation sites, whether of 10,000 years ago or only 50, are comparatively scarce. Of course, we do recover military artifacts daily, sometimes by the pound, but as most do not meet the 50-year cut-off, they are generally noted and discarded. So, equipped with screen and shovel, a tarp to catch the dirt, and a bag of tools, we set off along the grid transects, plugging away at the landscape and hoping to sift out a sample of what came before.

Fragments of a 19th-century washstand pitcher with Rockingham glaze found just east of the house. 

          The shovel test pits (STPs) around the house prove, predictably, positive. They are not, however, as artifact-rich as might have expected. The innumerable flakes and scraps of rusted tin roof are accompanied by square cut nails and glinting window glass. The nails are mostly arrow straight, suggesting the wood around them burned away. Also, they are not as corroded as they often are, and may thus have been tempered in a fire. Someone finds a horseshoe, another turns up the base of a thick ironstone chamberpot. Traces of the farmer and family jostle into view amid bouncing clumps of dirt: a sherd of stoneware- made in the mid- to late-1800s, maybe in Richmond, maybe in West Virginia; a pair of scissors, their handles missing and blades locked in rust but still sharp; a horseshoe from a horse who habitually dragged its feet. While we extract these bits and pieces, our company historian is back in Williamsburg or in the state library library in Richmond, piecing together the paper trail of this property or one from a similar project- another family and another forgotten story.

          Each of the positive shovel tests is recorded in the form of a soil column, a cross-section sketch of the layers encountered. These layers, or "strata" are labeled by texture- generally some combination of loam, silt, sand, and or clay and a color according to a standard system- the Munsell book. This book, with its earthy hues like 7.5YR 4/3 Strong Brown or 10YR 6/6 Brownish Yellow, is a constant companion on surveys. It is our best hope of standardizing how multiple pairs of eyes see the ground. Each space also provides for a list of artifacts and any comments such as 'remains of fencepost 1m. to east' or 'look out- poison ivy!'.  While the diggers advance from hole to hole, the crew chief traverses the entire project parcel, mapping natural and man-made features, above-ground remains, and any other pertinent information using the numbered and lettered grid. Together, the shovel tests and the map help interpret how the land was used and how that use changed over time. And so, our farmstead, little more that a few piles of stone and a scatter of depressions to the first time observer, begins to come into focus.

A preliminary interpretation of the farmhouse footprint on the forest floor.

          The site is relatively late and it has been affected by logging and erosion, with considerable areas of soil lost. Features and artifacts may have been hopelessly blended or washed away by man and nature. This site may see limited 'evaluation'- generally a series of 1-meter square test units dug down in levels to barren clay sub in search of soil features and artifacts in chronological and spatial context. Farmsteads, many archaeologists will say, are a dime a dozen. Archaeological surveys, performing work in compliance with the Archaeological and Historical Preservation Act of 1974 are, of necessity, a science of sampling and statistical value. What we are unable to learn from one site, we may be able to from another. The larger a sample we manage to study before it is lost, however, the richer and more meaningful the final picture. One particular farm may not be the best preserved or the most informative, but it is the record of a real, individual family, someone's ancestors, and it can be used to parse out their, and by extension, our story.

We share the woods with both squirrels and squirrel hunters, so bright orange vests are the order of the day.

A Cecropia or giant silk moth caterpillar. The blue dots will grow into sharp spines and the red and yellow tubercles develop into dotted spheres resembling murano glass beads. Caterpillars have become an unexpected threat to our crew. Several coworkers have now been stung by the 'saddleback' variety whose bee-like sting lasts for a day or more.  Lucky so far!

The green, mango-shaped fruit of the paw paw (Asimina triloba) will soon ripen to a deep yellow/brown and taste like tangy, sweet custard.