Ned & list,
    Can you elaborate a bit more (between sorting bricks) on how you are
analysing  your brick artifacts.  I am involved in a long term project
on the former Augusta Arsenal site (now the campus of Augusta State
University) and one of the most common artifacts here are bricks and
brick fragments (they are everywhere!).

    I have long felt that we ought to be able to do more with them than
we are now doing and so would love to know how to achieve "stunning"
results.  Currently, we measure them if we recover a group of whole
bricks that may have been deposited contemporaneously, and weigh them
collectively in the field and return them with backfill if not.  I have
a couple of piles on hand now, but am not sure what else we ought to be
doing with them.

    Suggestions regarding brick analysis are welcome.

    Chris Murphy

Ned Heite wrote:

> Over the years, I have seen many thousands of bricks dumped in the
> field without comment. But what distinguishes bricks from all the
> other ceramics on a site?  Basically bricks are different because
> they are "everywhere" and therefore are dismissed as uninformative.
>
> Bullbleep!
>
> Bricks are a great interpretive class of artifacts, but they are the
> Rodney Daingerfield of historical archaeology.
>
> Bricks should be treated as significant ceramic artifacts and
> analysed as any other artifacts. We are currently working on a
> multiple-site survey of a large tract, and we are saving and
> cataloguing every brick we find. The results have been stunning.
>
> Anita asked for intro, even from the GOF set. Right now I'm busy
> sorting bricks.
>
> --
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Sitting here drinking diet mead
> from my plastic fake auroch's horn
> flagon, I wonder that my
> contemporaries look like a bunch of
> old geezers.