Archaeologists get excited when we find old wells. Once it has been abandoned a well is a perfect place to throw trash, and I have dug into many that were full of wonderful goodies: pottery, glass, animal bones.
At the bottom of wells, in the waterlogged sections, wonderful things are sometimes preserved, made of wood, leather, or cloth. I once found an intact wooden toolbox in a well dating to around 1670. This toolbox had the same shape as the wooden toolboxes some old carpenters still use, with five-sided ends and a dowel across the top. I have seen a cedar bucket, shoes, a belt, and a leather saddle bag. European archaeologists have used the insect parts preserved in wells to figure out whether Neolithic houses had sod, shingle, or thatched roofs, since each has its own unique ecosystem.
So we got excited when we found this old well in Delaware yesterday. It dates to the 1800s, so less exciting to me than an older one, but a 120-year-old well with good preservation might still hold something very cool. We thought it was a well from its surface, at the bottom of the plowzone; it looked to be round, deep, and 5 feet (1.5 m) across. We first dug into it within one 3x3 foot test unit. We dug this down 1 foot (30 cm) to verify that the feature was deep and cylindrical. Then we dug a round shovel test in the bottom of the test unit, down 2.0 more feet (60 cm). We had not reached the bottom, so we knew it was a well.
Unable to reach the bottom in the shovel test, we covered the unit for the night and this morning went back with a bucket auger. I augered down from the bottom of the shovel test, dumping out each bucket full of soil and inspecting it. About 7.0 feet down the soil turned to what looked like natural gray sand, and the hole was filling with water, so I had reached the bottom. No wonders, alas, neither in the dry nor the wet section. Not all wells are as fun as we would like them to be.
Archaeologists get excited when we find old wells. Once it has been abandoned a well is a perfect place to throw trash, and I have dug into many that were full of wonderful goodies: pottery, glass, animal bones.
At the bottom of wells, in the waterlogged sections, wonderful things are sometimes preserved, made of wood, leather, or cloth. I once found an intact wooden toolbox in a well dating to around 1670. This toolbox had the same shape as the wooden toolboxes some old carpenters still use, with five-sided ends and a dowel across the top. I have seen a cedar bucket, shoes, a belt, and a leather saddle bag. European archaeologists have used the insect parts preserved in wells to figure out whether Neolithic houses had sod, shingle, or thatched roofs, since each has its own unique ecosystem.
So we got excited when we found this old well in Delaware yesterday. It dates to the 1800s, so less exciting to me than an older one, but a 120-year-old well with good preservation might still hold something very cool. We thought it was a well from its surface, at the bottom of the plowzone; it looked to be round, deep, and 5 feet (1.5 m) across. We first dug into it within one 3x3 foot test unit. We dug this down 1 foot (30 cm) to verify that the feature was deep and cylindrical. Then we dug a round shovel test in the bottom of the test unit, down 2.0 more feet (60 cm). We had not reached the bottom, so we knew it was a well.
Unable to reach the bottom in the shovel test, we covered the unit for the night and this morning went back with a bucket auger. I augered down from the bottom of the shovel test, dumping out each bucket full of soil and inspecting it. About 7.0 feet down the soil turned to what looked like natural gray sand, and the hole was filling with water, so I had reached the bottom. No wonders, alas, neither in the dry nor the wet section. Not all wells are as fun as we would like them to be.
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