A Week in the Field

I was in the field for four days this week, with long commutes, so not much time to write.

Here is one archaeological find, a sherd of a kind of pottery called Pope's Creek Net Impressed. This was made and used by the same Middle Woodland people I wrote about three weeks ago, although from a different site.

Incidentally Pope's Creek was named for the same Pope family that created endless confusion over the naming of places around Washington. One of the Popes claimed a land grant in what is now DC that he called Rome, so he could be the Pope in Rome. He named the creek that flowed across this property the Tiber. That, not some later claim to imperiam grandeur, is why Washington had a stream called Tiber Creek.

Don't know what this is beautiful bush is; looked like some kind of feral hydrangea, escaped from one of the expensively landscaped mansions in the neighborhood.

I was near Pimmit Run for much of this time, and I had time to explore down the creek to its mouth. This was an industrial area for two centuries. I believe these stones are a remnant of Pearson's Mill, which is where the Declaration of Independence and other key papers were hidden when the British took Washington in 1814.

This seems to be a remnant of a small hydrolectric station built in the 1890s.

The saw-toothed landscape is a remnant of quarrying in the early 1900s; the Potomac is in the background. 

Very little about this landscape is natural. Knowing so much history about this part of the world, I often find it amusing to participate in environmental impact studies here. Under NEPA, there are two kinds of impacts, "temporary" and "permanent." Temporary means during construction, things like dust and vibration from machines. Everything else is permanent. So I will hear people talking about "permanent" impacts to a forest that I know has only been there for 60 years, growing over an old quarry or a factory or what have you, and while I feel certain that whatever I am helping to build will not really last any longer, I strive to keep my mouth shut about what "permanent" really means; nobody likes a smart-aleck.

Walking along Pimmit Run I beheld the marvelous spectacle of wisteria overhanging the creek, like something from a fantasy jungle.

And then when I walked in the other direction, even more spectacular. There is much to be seen in the world, if you look.