by Daniel Rhodes

Field Blog October 2 and 4

October 2

In the past week, we have turned our attention away from the area outside of Fort Tombecbe would have initially been into an area further east closer to the property line. This area isn't as easy to access because on one side of the "path" (I put that in quotes because it isn't a path) are incredibly thick trees and fine brush, and on the other side is an incredibly sharp barbed wire fence. The reason we have chosen this area is that it is mentioned quite frequently in documentation by inhabitants of the fort as areas where a Choctaw village was located. We started as we always do, doing a surface investigation with some success finding bits of glass and pottery. We started planting our flags for our shovel test markers, making them five meters apart instead of the usual ten, because we had a lot more area to cover than the previous area. It seemed like every shovel test we found something of note almost instantly, everything from bits of pottery (pictured below) to a full-sized musket ball, even a burnt bone chunk (I know chunk is not very scientific). Most of the pottery sherds were caked with dirt and mud. After cleaning that off, Dr. Dumas suggested giving it a little lick (I'm not joking about this part.) It helps to tell the difference between the surface texture of a pottery sherd and an ordinary rock. I may or may not have called it "Tasting History." After that, we called it a day. When I got back to my apartment,  brushed my teeth several times to make sure I got the taste of history out of my mouth.

October 4th

Today started like any other. We did a few more shovel tests and used letters to mark them on our map this time so as not to mix them up with samples we had taken from previous shovel test area. All tests will be assigned a Field Specimen number, or F.S. number to keep them separate from one another. We managed to get tests I through Q completed, so we got a lot accomplished testing-wise. We found a few pottery sherds but little else. We will have to wait and see what results further screening gives us. Connor saw a grub worm in one of his tests then proceeded to eat it (I didn't see him eat it, but I can't say for sure that he didn't so…). We packed up and return to the lab and called it a day. Earlier this week Dr. Dumas loaned me the monograph by James Pate that has all his research on the Fort's history. It details the French, English, Spanish, and American occupations. It's so detailed, it has letters and correspondence between people who occupied the fort and people at outposts elsewhere. The part I wanted to focus on was the recorded interactions between the fort occupants and the Native Americans that lived around the fort at the time since so much of what we have found lately was Native in origin. Since I don't have the knowledge to say for sure, I could only guess that most of the pottery we've found was Choctaw and Proto-Choctaw (What the Choctaw were before they were the Choctaw). We’ve found some shell-tempered pottery, which is pottery made from shells most likely collected from the Tombigbee River and grog-tempered pottery, which is pottery made from old or broken pottery. The reason I assume it is Choctaw is because they are recorded to have numbered in the thousands as compared to the French occupation of maybe a hundred at the time and how the French depended on them for survival in the harsh colonial age of Alabama. I think this is an excellent place to end the week. I've learned a lot and want to keep reading so I can learn more.