In September of 2017, PJHS members, archaeologists and volunteers, tested the southwest corner of the John and Elizabeth Howland Homestead. One of the goals was to investigate piles and possible linear arrangements of stones encountered during brush removal in this area. It appears that, this year, we discovered a previously unknown building in the central area of our excavation. It may be a northern extension of the building associated with the western cellarhole, or it may be a separate building in the northern yard. The artifacts associated with it appear domestic in nature, specifically the bone and ceramics, so it probably was not a barn or outbuilding. Excavation of the units to the east and north have shown that no building remains are present in those areas.
Further excavation around the area we excavated in 2017 was recommended. It appeared that we had found traces of at least one previously unknown building at the site, a building that, due to the orientation of stones we had thus far uncovered, was felt to probably not date to the John and Elizabeth Howland period and which did not appear to have been impacted by Strickland’s excavations.
The 2018 work focused on expanding and more completely exploring the area we worked at in 2017, the southwest portion of the yard between the John and Elizabeth Howland house and the later building cellar hole towards the road. We re-exposed the area that we worked in the previous year to see how extensive the low stone foundations from 2017 were and when they dated to. Our 2018 excavations showed that they appear to represent another building on the property, what appears to be an outbuilding measuring approximately 9 feet east to west by 16 feet north to south. The building is not oriented exactly the same as either the John and Elizabeth house or the later cellar holes, meaning that it may date to a different time period than either. It could date to the period after John’s death when Joseph was living across the street, possibly representing an outbuilding of his farm; that it may date to after his occupation to the period when Benjamin Lothrop owned the property, again representing an outbuilding; or that it dates to earlier than then the Howland occupation, possibly representing an outbuilding associated with the occupation of the site by John Jenney.
Excavation of a portion of foundation wall showed that it appeared to represent a modification to an earlier post-in-ground building. The artifacts recovered from the excavation of the postholes appear few and far between, supporting an interpretation of the features being early and possibly associated with Jenney. The working hypothesis is that this was one of the outbuildings that was built on the site by Jenney and sold to John in February 1638/39 “..a house, barn and out-buildings at Rocky Nook, with its uplands and five acres of adjoining meadow”. The building may have started out as post-in-ground and as the post decayed, they were replaced with a low stone foundation. Further investigation of this building next year will help to test this hypothesis. The other area investigated was the southern area between the two later cellarholes. Here Eldon Gay identified a flat stone platform between the cellarholes that may represent a working surface associated with the building, possibly a floor within a barn, or the base of a chimney.
Read the full report HERE 2018 John Howland Report