This is a late response to Barbara Heath's request for info on specific
features related to non-masonry chimneys. Barbara, I think you probably
have seen Ribin's report on the Gilliam Site, right? She had some odd
holes and what looked for all the world like the wiggly lines of some
burned woven wattles. At Magnolia Grange I had scorched earth and a good
nail pattern to go by. At the Jordan's Point sites we had man early
non-masonry chimneys and hearths, most of them represented by little more
than one or two small posts, some burned subsoil and scatters of burned
daub.
 
 The best one for me is a site I found in a Phase 1 survey in
Stafford County. This was clearly the remains of a slave cabin in the
woods. There were four stones set up for corner piers, a short shallow
trench to anchor the front steps, and a pile of dirt at the gable end
where the chimney had been. A small test hole in the "pile of dirt
terminated on a floor of broken bricks pressed into the mud and a good
overlying layer of burned daub and charcoal. The chimney had been "cured"
with at least one good fire. However, the house was never completed or
lived in. Intensive testing did not reveal the first piece of glass, nail,
potsherd or other artifact. Leading from the house was the still quite
visible remans of a corduroy road leading to a spot which on an 1864 map
was labelled "Negro Huts" or something similar. I concluded the house was
too far away and too close to the edge of the property (a boundary ditch
ran nearly adjacent to the house. This was on one of the Ball plantations.
 
Hope this is helpful...but I have doubts.
 
Dan Mouer
Virginia Commonwealth University
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http://saturn.vcu.edu/~dmouer/homepage.htm