Another Day of Intrigue in Delaware Archaeology

Today we dealt with a mystery. This thing, the biggest feature on the site, measures about 10 by 11 feet (3 x 3.3m), with a top of layer of gray silt that was intentionally dumped into the hole. I helped dig out one quadrant during our testing last year, and we thought we found the bottom about 2 feet (60 cm) down. We thought the same thing in the second quadrant.

But in the third we found a gap in that bottom layer that we had thought was natural subsoil, and through it we could see what looked like more fill. Mary, shoveling in the picture, was the one who saw this and starting thinking we had it all wrong.

So we started messing around with it, and we realized that what we had taken for the bottom was just more fill very similar to the natural soil. Here Jason tries some troweling. If you click on his picture to blow it up you can see a layer of yellowish brown sandy loam sloping in from the right, through the tip of the shadow of Jason's hat. That is the false bottom of the feature.

I take a turn, shoveling madly.

Eventually we figured out that below this false bottom of sterile fill, the sides of the feature start heading straight down. It must be a well. But a very weird well it is. Usually when a well washes in at the top, which is how you get such a wide hole, the soil in the top is washed-in topsoil. But this hole was intentionally filled in with soil from elsewhere. I can't think of a sequence of events that would lead to a well having such a wide opening that was then filled in. Whatever that sequence of events, the top of the well is filled with nearly sterile soil, which has made this (so far) the most artifact-poor well I have ever dug. We'll have to see if there is anything else in the deeper layers.