3/14/04

        We got an early start this morning. We were back at the same property as last week. Nobody was there to bother, and we were eager to get into another pontil pit.

        The first privy we dug was one we had started to tunnel in from the side on the previous dig. Steve had gone back Sunday, alone, to try to finish it. It was way to hard, and he filled it in. We dug it, and did pull out some bottles, but nothing to spectacular. The best piece was a little pitcher that had a face on it that looked like a troll, or maybe even Santa Claus.

Craig with the face pitcher

    On to the next pit. We got fooled by this one. It had ash, bone, and pottery, but not much glass. We thought the probe was clunking on glass at the 5 foot level. It turned out to be stones and a crunchy gravel layer. Bummer.

    We had one more spot left to check. We started a test hole and it wasn't looking promising. We decide to quit while we were ahead. Craig had lined up another property a few blocks away. We packed up and headed for this new locale. 

    The boys had probed this one earlier in the week. They thought it to be an early pit. They said there was very little ash and plenty of "clunks" 7 feet down at the bottom. This usually means an earlier pit. We dug and dug. There wasn't much clutter in the fill. It was pure sand. I was starting to think this wasn't a pit. Maybe we were being fooled by those stones and gravel again. Steve was the first to hit the night soil layer. It was nice and dark, and the seeds could easily be seen from above. The clunks we were probing earlier ended up being a lot of broken pottery. Glass was very thin. The first whole bottle Steve got had "Bond" embossed on the side. No city name, oh well. I was next up. I was scratching along a found a olive shade of green looking shard. I tossed it up to Steve and asked if he thought it was a wine. He said, "Yeah, probably". My next swipe revealed a broken base in the same color. Holy Crap, it was a flask. I checked for embossing. Sure enough, it was a "For Pike's Peak" in an olive green shade. Wow, how come all the good stuff is broken? It gets worse, we find another neck for a different flask in the same color as the first. After poking around, I find the panel. It is another "Pike's Peak" this time the reverse is embossed with the prospector shooting a deer with a gun. Unbelievable.

Base of one of the For Pike's Peak

    Even though we are finding pieces, we are still a little reserved. 99.9% of the little bit of stuff we are finding is broken. Craig is up next. He is down in the pit when Steve notices this big domestic rabbit browsing in the yard. It came out of a burrow under the garage. It kept trying to get to the edge of the hole, and Steve kept  shooing it away. Then it decides to start climbing the dirt pile when Craig was getting out. It was using glass shards sticking out of the dirt to scratch it's chin.  It was funny, I guess you had to be there.

Craig and that Wascally Wabbit 

    The only other intact bottle we got from this pit was an open pontil utility. 

    We had time for one more pit. This one was a little closer to the lot line in the back yard. When we got down to the ash, we could tell it was going to be a later pit. It had plenty of bottles. A lot of catsups, Worcestershire sauces, and olive oils. We did get a quart, applied crown, "Klein" in aqua from Burlington, Wisconsin. Before we covered it up, Steve went through the ritual of probing through the sides of the pit from the inside. We do this to see if there is a pit next to this one. Sure enough there was one under the fence next to it. It was deep and going to be a tunnel project. It ended up being full of ash and void of bottles.