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US Route 301 Archaeology Update

Written on: August 20th, 2012 in Archaeology Updates US301

Last week Hunter Research, Inc. started data recovery excavations at the Cardon-Holton Site (7NC-F-128, N14508), another early historic farmstead along the U.S. Route 301 alignment.  (Below is a link to a handout about the site.) 

Initially six, six-foot square excavation units were targeted to recover artifacts from the plow-zone in areas where concentrations were observed on the surface and subsurface during the earlier excavations.  Numerous important artifacts dating to the late 17^th and early 18^thcenturies recovered from these first excavation units led us to increase the number to 16.  At the same time the backhoe was busy stripping off the plow-zone from the northern portion of the site.  Equipped with a sharp, flat steel collar, the machine leaves a crisp clean surface which is then refined with a flat-bladed shovel and trowels to reveal disturbances to the underlying subsoil, both cultural (such as pits and post holes) and non-cultural (such as trees and animal burrows).

Early colonial artifacts of note recovered from the excavation units included fragments of bulbous German Westerwald stoneware jugs with rilled necks colored with purple manganese pigment (bottom row, right), Midlands mottled from central England (top row left), dot and combed buff-bodied earthenware attributed to Staffordshire, England (top and middle row, center), small bits of sgraffito (scratched decoration) red-bodied earthenware plates similar to vessels identified as originating from the town of Bideford in North Devon, England (middle row, right) and dipper white salt glazed stoneware also from England.