PTAP in the Field

Sunday and Monday the Port Tobacco Archaeological Project returns to the field. We will be surface collecting the fields extending southward from town to Warehouse Point.

We are looking for Indian sites as part of our continuing effort to understand Native American lifeways in the valley, as well as determine how and when the Port Tobacco River shifted and the role of upland sediments in that movement.

Of course, we are also trying to locate historic period sites. Are there early sites south of town representing Chandler's Town (late 17th, very early 18th centuries)? Did the move of port facilities south to Warehouse Point occur at one time, or incrementally, leaving traces of progressively later occupations as one moves south along the river?

Our study will be complicated somewhat in that the process of sedimentation from the uplands to the east that buried the town and filled the river channel probably covered the fields as well. Hopefully, the plow will have scratched some of these deeper deposits, bringing enough artifacts to the surface to allow us to identify prehistoric and historic deposits.

I'll post some initial impressions after fieldwork tomorrow, if I have the energy after slogging through plowed fields all day.

Jim