Fieldwork resumed this week on the New Acadia Project Summer 2015 archaeological expedition. The field crew has been methodically sampling the soil in areas along the Teche Ridge - the natural levee of Bayou Teche - in order to find evidence of the previous residents.
 |
| Amy and Katie carefully sift the soil from one of many, many shovel tests. |
Excavation of these small holes or "shovel tests" has already yielded some artifacts, such as fragments of ceramic plates, shards of bottle glass, pieces of brick, and rusted nails. The placement of the shovel tests is partly based on a systematic sampling strategy. The spatial distributions of different kinds of artifacts beneath the ground can represent the locations of past land use, the various activities that occurred, and relative age of the site.
The decorations on the ceramic sherds and types that have been found indicate some were manufactured as early as the 1780s, but most date from the 1800s and early 1900s. The New Acadia Project is searching for artifacts and other evidence of sites dating from the 1760s - beginning in 1765 to be precise - when a group of more than 200 Acadians arrived in the region known as Fausse Pointe.
 |
| Mark, Katie, and Amy at the LaPAL field lab. |
The New Acadia Project archaeological expedition is based out of the
Louisiana Public Archaeology Lab (LaPAL), which is dedicated to outreach, research, education, and partnerships involving Louisiana's endangered and undiscovered archaeological record and cultural resources.
 |
| The author with laptop and equipment in the LaPAL field lab. |
