Some Native American ceramics of the Woodland Period were made by adding to the local clays a temper of crushed shell. During burial this temper can be dissolved out of the clay by acidic soil water leaving the potsherds riddled … Continue reading →

By Dennis Piechota At the Burial Hill site in Plymouth, Massachusetts we screen all excavated soil though 1/8” or ¼” screens. The 1/8 inch screens are used for features, and they recover hundreds of very small unknowns, tiny soil covered … Continue reading →

In this post, Dennis Piechota, the archaeological conservator at the Fiske Center, recounts the discovery of the central objects in the Cole’s Hill cache. In the field, we recognized that we had something rectangular and fragile, with leather components, so … Continue reading →