I was part of the team of work horses that did the digging, sifting and on rainy days the sorting.
The digging was interresting for the methodology used. The holes had to be measured and precise. When an anomoly was encountered shovels were put away and spades and a small broom was employed. We were able to locate the brick floors, the inner and outer walls, several fireplaces, and a trash pile or two. A great deal was learned about the layout of the buildings themselves. I believe that what they learned was that what they thought was incorrect.
The sorting was most interresting, though it was done in the cold damp Fort itself and no amount of hot coffee and doughnuts could take the chill off completely. We sorted into several piles then bagged and labeled. The catagories were bones, metal, glass, pottery/ceramics and other. Findings included nails, straight pins, shot, several sets of fine dishes, medicine and whiskey bottles, window glass, buttons, deer, cattle and chicken bones and a bayonette.
The most interresting thing I learned was that by studying a piece of a medicine bottle and it's location and condition the archeologist surmised that the residents of the fort must have had to go through great periods of time before new supplies were brought in. The bottle had been reused several times over. You know, my mother puts freezer zip lock bags in the dish washer and reuses them. She lives about three miles from a store and has a working car. She chooses to be frugal becasue it is a characteristic of the culture she was raised in not because she has to be. Sometimes I wonder what we can really assume when it comes to the nature of humans.
