Dear Ms. Snow,
 
I would hazzard a guess that the feature you describe could be what
we back in the Southeast call a "root cellar," and if you've followed
HISTARCH for a while, you'll know that these features are something
rather different from what is meant by that term in the north and the
midwest. I am refer to a small storage pit found most frequently
beneath the floor of a slave cabin or home of a free African
American. They are found in Virginia (for instance) beginning in the
early 17th century, but are most common in the late 18th and early
19th c. I know of two which were used into the 20th c. Among the
contents of such cellars typical finds include faunal remains, and
fish are a very common component. Beads are also fairly frequent
finds, and I know of at leas two such Virginia features which
contained unfired clay. Ine occurrence was a large ball of clay in a
late 18th-c. quarter at Flowerdew Hundred, and the other was a stack
of unfired bricks in a root cellar at Jordan's Point. There are often
no remaining architectural features from the surrounding cabin,
presumeably because they were erected as log cabins or frame houses
on mudsills. Sometimes there is a fired stain or shallow depression
which marks the remains of a mud-plastered wooden chimney.
 
I many be way off base hhere, but if you dicover that your occupants
were black, I'd love to hear more about the site. (Of course I'd like
to hear more in any case.
 
Good fishin'
 
Dan Mouer