Ned, just a comment. Most shops, up until the advent of coal and oil
heat, would have burned the scraps you mention. Even with coal burning
stoves, the wood scraps would have been valuable as fire starters and fuel
on cool mornings when a coal fire wasn't needed. Does this information add
to your analysis as to when the well might have been filled in?
Charles Adkins
BLM Archaeologist
Fairbanks, AK
Ned Heite
<[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask]
Sent by: cc:
HISTORICAL Subject: Well contents
ARCHAEOLOGY
<[log in to unmask]
>
10/27/2003 11:13
PM
Please respond to
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY
We just finished digging a well from the eighteenth century, which is
most curious in several ways.
First, the shaft lining is a hollowed cypress log, in three-foot
sections. The log is about 30 inches in diameter, and it has been
hollowed into a tube with walls about two inches thick. We have one
whole section, which was the bottom three feet of the well, and about
a third of the next section upwards. There are toolmarks on the
inside, indicating some kind of scorp or other special tool was used,
to finish at least.
The result is a pretty remarkable piece of woodworking, any way you
put it, and the owner is thinking of preserving it as a museum
exhibit.
The second mystery in the well is the fill. The well was backfilled
entirely with wood scraps. There are shavings of various sorts,
indicating that this is waste from several different woodworking
projects. There also are pieces of non-woodworking waste, such as a
barrel stave and a trenail. This all points to a craftsman's shop
being cleaned out and the detritus dumped into an abandoned well.
There is a later well next to it, which was a barrel at the bottom of
a framed shaft.
--
[log in to unmask]
A sure sign you're over the hill is when you catch yourself referring
to your "dress" Birkenstocks!
|
