How have things been going I hear (all three of you) cry?! Well, but slowly, I reply.
Sylvana and I are plugging away at the Stage 1 area. As per the previous update, Sylvana is working in the area corresponding with the site of the former wood shed (from no earlier than 1856) and waterfront reclamation. She has excavated through the likely underfloor deposit relating to the shed (a layer of fine silt which had accumulated under the shed’s timber flooring) and is now making her way through a series of compact sandstone, mortar and crushed brick layers. In the photo below (top right) you can see these as coloured bands in the section of the trench. The dark band is a layer of fine silt which accumulated when one of the layers (crushed yellow sandstone) was exposed for a period of time – before being covered by a mix of mortar and sandstone presaging the construction of the shed. We think these layers might be related to reclamation activity carried out between 1830-56, the compact nature of the deposits suggesting that they were attempting to create a solid layer that could withstand any upwelling of the tide through the reclamation material.
Here you can see the two squares we are working in. Sylvana’s technicolour dream trench is shown on the right. My drab gravel surfaces on the left
I am ferreting away in the square which straddles the odd round thing and the southern footing of the foundry. Here I am interested in the yard phasing, how it relates to the features and what it is set on. This week I have found that the yard comprises at least four separate events. I can tell this because the broken dolerite that has been used to surface the yard has been mixed with different coloured silts (and in one case, charcoal), which separates the relatively homogenous layers. At the moment, it looks like I am down to the first gravel layer (from possibly the 1830s), which then had another layer of gravel deposited in the 1840s. These have been cut by the round thing and the foundry footing, with another layer (the final surface) on top. This suggests the final layer was laid in the 1850s. A lot of artefacts have been coming off the surface, but only pieces of unidentified iron – which is unsurprising considering the amount of metalworking going on in the area.
In the next week I will hopefully bust through to the layer below the first gravel surface, to get our first glimpse of really early Port Arthur. Sylvana will also hopefully start to uncover some of the earliest phases of reclamation.
