05/05/12

A Couple of Graves?

On July 15, 2011, I was asked by a friend to show him the Log College site in Warminster, Bucks County, PA.  He had just recently heard of Tennent's Log College.  While visiting the site,  I demonstrated how the outline of the college had been located around the monument that stands there.  Greg had watched me dowse lines at the Moland house earlier, but this time he seemed to consider the technique a bit more.

Saturday, the 16th, I received an excited call from Greg.  He said that he had found  many ovals on his property, using a dowsing rod.  My first question was: 'and how long have you been dowsing?  He had only begun that day.  I little more conversation and I became convinced that he had found something.  Dropping my plans for the day, I put a few things in the car, and drove to his house on Dark Hollow Road, Tinicum Township, Bucks County , PA.  On arrival, I demonstrated how he has to be careful when using spray paint to mark lines, as he had started to do.  The rod will respond to paint, once it dries.  I then confirmed  his find and we marked out two ovals and a circle, using short sticks.  For photos, we then used paint.  The nominal dimensions of the ovals are 68 inches by 36 inches.  The circles are a nominal 26 inches diameter.  Greg then took me for a tour of his two acre property.  The whole property is covered with these outlines, in rows and columns.  We later noted that they extend into four other properties, and in the Dark Hollow Road bed.  I scanned the road, and found the lines of a cart way.  There are also ovals and circles within these lines.  There is another set of cart way lines that run parallel to the road and pass through the house and porch.  The ovals and circles are under the house, porch, patio, cart way and garage.  There must be several hundred over the five properties.

After several phone conversations with other amateur archaeologist, with whom I am associated,  Greg decided to begin digging.  We selected an oval, and began.  We dug until night fall and found only soil and shale.  About eighty percent was shale.  We began again on Sunday and went down to about 36 inches, still only soil and shale.  It was very hard digging.  We had visits from my archaeology associates.  The mystery continued.

On Monday, Greg called several agencies and professional archaeologists.  He wanted to talk to those with experience in, and knowledge of native American sites.  From those conversations, we decided to spend the rest of the day digging an oval along a line of very old juniper trees.  Each one of these trees has an oval around it.  The ground level is higher along the tree line than the ground on each side.  We selected an oval where there was no tree and dug down about ten inches.  The soil was dry with some large stones.  I was easy to trowel.  Many colonial and later artifacts came out, but no native American.  We also dug a strip to the next oval with a tree in it.  More of the same type of artifacts came out.  On Tuesday, the site was visited by Michael Young of Richard Grubb & Associates (MGA).  Michael is the Principal Senior Archaeologist at MGA.  He surveyed what we had found and took some soil samples.  He took some artifact samples to be analyzed as bone.  It was refreshing that Michael was not negative about our find.  What a mystery!