Marie,
 
Although I cannot provide a final report, I removed blocks of silty clay  
from an exposed trash feature associated with an 18th century Spanish cannon  
battery at Ballast Point, CA-SDI-12,000, in San Diego, California. The silty  
clay formed in a ponding environment and quickly became anaerobic. The pond must  
have been about 8-12 inches deep and received a very fine clay sediment that  
transported in a colloidal state and settled around scraps of cut leather, 
bone,  Spanish Majolica, seeds, and fruit pits. When we soaked the clay lumps in 
fresh  water, tiny seeds floated to the surface. The leather had to be 
de-salted in  distilled water baths for over a year and we then soaked them in 
Carbowax to  preserve the specimens. The seeds have yet to be analyzed. There were 
too few  ceramic pieces to make much of an interpretation. Once softened, we 
then placed  the clay lumps in a window screen box and hosed off the clay to 
expose fine  little pieces of things. My interpretation is the pond was near a 
trash deposit  from both the kitchen and a leather shop, but most of the 
feature is sealed  beneath a 1898 U.S. Artillery battery that has 32-foot thick 
concrete walls that  are likely to prevent archaeology exposure in my lifetime.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
 
 
In a message dated 1/20/2009 8:13:41 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

On a  recent excavation in SW Ohio, we took 5-gallon bulk samples from a  
19th-cen. Anglo-American refuse pit.  We have the opportunity to  float one 
or 
more of these samples.  Can the HISTARCH community offer  references or 
articles concerning the results and intrepretations of  
faunal/botantical/artifact 
recovery from float samples from similar  contexts?  

Best,

Marie  Pokrant


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