DAY OF THE DIG

Photo courtesy of Rick Arsenault

It was a bright sunny morning when I arrived at Fort Beausèjour, well before the rest of my digging colleagues. I had been accepted for the early morning archeology dig on Friday the 13th of August, the last weekend of the 2010 program.

There was a short introduction, by Archeologist Charles Burke, on the process used to map out areas selected for an archeological study; how we should scrape/sift through the earth; what we would be looking for, and what we would probably find - if we were lucky. Following this we drove the short distance to the actual dig site located in a wide farm field, just steps away from a large marsh which separated the former village from the distant Fort.

During the introduction at the Fort, we had been told that when Parks Canada had acquired the 137 acres of the village, they had no idea of how the village had been laid out. In order to find some clue as to where to excavate, they dug several test holes throughout the site. If the test hole produced artifacts then they stopped excavation and moved on to another spot. After several shallow holes, or plots, were dug they could then evaluate what they had found, and sketch a rough map, with the help of satellite photographs, of how the village may have been laid out.

To test their theory, squares between 8 and 10 feet apiece were marked out in staggered patterns. In the photo below, taken a few years ago, you can see some rocks along the left hand side of the forward square. They could possibly indicate a wall or remains of some building, and the other squares behind it are exploratory holes to try and find connecting walls.

There were ten of us that bright sunny morning, plus Mr. Burk’s four archeological assistants, and they quickly assigned us to several of the pre-worked plots and handed us our tools - a bucket to carry dirt in, a small trowel to scrape the earth with, a dust pan for lifting the dirt into the bucket, a kneeling pad (thank goodness for that) and a pair of gloves.

We were shown how big an area to work and how to use the trowel to gently scrape away the compacted dirt, keeping a close eye as we went along for any signs of something that didn’t look like it belonged there.

When he assigned a section for me work, Mr. Burk indicated that I would might find some interesting items. The previous two days had uncovered several small but interesting items, but by noon I had only found several chicken bones, one lambs tooth, and a handful of Daubs.
A Daub looks very much like a misshapen piece of clay that could be completely overlooked if you didn’t know what it actually was.

When the Acadians built their log and stone buildings, they filled the cracks between the main material width a mixture of straw and mud, insulating their homes against the harsh Maritime winters. When the village was razed in 1750, the heat of the fires cooked the hardened insulation, turning it into lumps of ash which are called Daubs.

They have no value except that Mr. Burk explained to me that he has us collect them because some day he hopes to find imbedded in a Daub, the fingerprint of one of the early Acadians.

Although I didn’t find anything of great historical value, the whole experience of actually being a part of a real archeology dig, in a place where my ancestor once resided, was a thrill of a lifetime.

If you are interested in more information on the Beaubassin site and seeing pictures of what artifacts has been found so far, go to: http://publicarchaeologyexperience.wordpress.com/