Margaret Hanna, archaeologist

Monday, July 23:
Hot, hot, hot. And humid. And no wind. By the end of the day, we are exhausted.

Evelyn finishes excavating the squared log and what remains of the floorboards in her unit, but no mortise has appeared. She reopens the adjacent unit that we started last year, but excavated only until we found the top of the log.

Karmen discovers that the upper part of the west wall log in her unit is extremely rotten, almost like powder, and it crumbles at the slightest touch. To make things even more interesting, there is a space about 5 cm wide between the outside of the log and the clay, and the space is quite deep. By the end of the day, she has uncovered at least four floorboards and the end of the underlying joist on the inside of the house. However, her challenge is to excavate around and under a long heavy metal rod or wire, the end of which is firmly embedded under the log.

Evelyn is finding some interesting features in her unit. The top of the north wall log appears to be worn or rotted away. A small part of the log is charred, and a burned area is present just inside the log. The joist that is in front of the fireplace apron in 38N5E butts up against the north wall. Floorboards are present, some of which are parallel to the north wall (they are supposed to be perpendicular to the wall).

Karmen finishes uncovering the floorboards inside the west wall, and turns her attention to the outside of the wall. The logs forming the west wall go down, way down, and the base log appears to be wider than the ones on top of it.

Back in the centre of the house, I am excavating deposits that would be under the floor of the house, if the floorboards still existed. After digging through a very thin layer of clay, I find chopped-up bits of burned wood mixed in with burned metal strapping, a long length of heavy wire, and a Cross and Blackwell push-in can lid. The two joists appear to be diving down. The south joist has two rows of machine-cut nails, the north joist has very few. I also find three mouse-sized rodent burrows and nests in the soils that would have been under the floorboards.

Doug Chisholm, a friend from La Ronge, flies over the site in late afternoon and stops in for a visit.

Thursday, July 26:
Cloudy, very windy, and cool.

moss insulation between logs

Karmen begins working with Sharon to finish excavating the mess of logs in Sharon's unit. They find more compacted wood chips (that we now know are insulation, not OSB) and fibrous stuff that might be moss which was also commonly used as insulation. Upon investigating the little log shed behind the church, we discover that moss was used as insulation between the logs in it.

Evelyn continues finding floorboards, and at the end of the day uncovers an axe head, which we leave in place to photograph first thing tomorrow morning.

At about 30 – 35 cm below surface, I find a rock that appears to have been placed underneath the south joist unit. Coincidence? Or was it placed there deliberately to support the joist? At about 35 cm below surface, I encounter the original ground surface, except it stops suddenly in about the middle of the unit and is replaced by a finely mottled, dark loamy fill. I find several metal artifacts in the loamy fill, all of which are very corroded. Now what's going on? Have I found the edge of a pit?

Friday, July 27:
Hot, smoky.

We photograph and remove the axe in Evelyn's unit. She continues to follow the floorboards southward in her unit.

I am now down to 45 cm below surface, and am finding pony beads, miniscule seed beads, and buttons, as well as nails and other rusty bits of metal, in the loamy fill. At day's end, I map in the floorboards, joists and the edge of the pit, or whatever it is.

Karmen makes the big discoveries of the day. First, she finds a large but rather innocuous-looking chunk of birch bark which, when we turn it over, has stitching holes. It is the end of a container used for berry-picking. Next, she finds a concentration of beads that turns out to be a remnant of beadwork with a thin fibrous layer under it that might be moosehide. We encase it in paraffin wax so that we can lift it intact tomorrow, once the paraffin hardens.

Karmen excavating beadwork.

beadwork covered with first layer of paraffin wax

part of birch bark container

Saturday, July 28:
Hot, humid. Stanley Mission is hosting a fish derby this week-end and there are boats everywhere. Prize for the biggest pickerel is $10,000.00!

Karmen holding encased beadwork.

We encase the beadwork in specially prepared cheesecloth and remove it by mid-morning. We then decide that Karmen should help me excavate in my unit. By mid-day we realize that we have to open the unit to the west to see what is happening with this mottled fill. Is it a pit? If so, how big is the pit? Is it the rumoured root cellar? We excavate quickly in this new unit and by the end of day, we begin to encounter several rocks.

Sunday, July 29:
Hot, humid, windless. The fish derby continues.

All three of us—Evelyn, Karmen and I—are excavating in the same unit, making for a very cozy situation. By mid-day, we have uncovered a solid layer of rocks, all from the collapsed chimney. We photograph and remove the rocks, and discover the famous “wood chip” layer directly underneath.

collapsed chimney rocks

In the evening, we pour over a 1927 aerial photograph of the Old Village and Fawcett's 1920 map. “Our” house does not appear on either, which means that it had been abandoned and dismantled prior to 1920—another piece of evidence against the hypothesis that this was Murdoch McKenzie's house.

Monday, July 30:
The day starts off with a nice wind that soon dies down, leaving us with hot and humid weather that has been the norm this month.

paleosols, floors, and pits

Evelyn and Karmen begin drawing profiles. Meanwhile, Sharon and I dig through the “wood chip” layer and clean off the two joists. The double row of machine-cut nails continues along the south joist, but the north joist has almost no nails. What is of greatest interest is the discovery that the south joist has been badly charred. This, together with the charred logs in Evelyn's unit, causes us to wonder if perhaps the house burned down. By the end of the day, we reach the top of the mysterious fill.

charred joist

Tuesday, July 31:
Hot and sunny at first, then the day clouds over and becomes very cool.

This is our last day of excavating. Evelyn and Karmen continue drawing profiles all day long while Sharon and I keep digging down and down and down. We finally stop at a depth of 85 cm. The soil is getting too wet to screen, and the hole in which I am working is getting too small to avoid stepping on the saplings that are appearing. Saplings? There are three, and they appear to have been placed around the perimeter of the root cellar—yes, this is definitely a root cellar. People here have told us that they used to line the root cellars with grass; the saplings were probably put there to hold the grass in place.

Photo Credit: Roger Clayton
Margaret excavating the root cellar.

We've also found some interesting artifacts in the fill—part of a crooked knife, several blue and turquoise pony beads, a bone pin from the cup-and-pin game, another bi-pointed bone tool and a large iron ring that we jokingly call Murdoch McKenzie's wedding ring.

A crooked knife used for woodworking.

At the end of the day, we take most of the equipment down to the storage shed.

Wednesday, August 1:
Very, very windy.

Sharon and I take elevations on many parts of the house so that we can determine how much, if any, the house has shifted, slumped or heaved while it was buried. Evelyn and Karmen pull up the stakes around the units, and take down the screens and our shelter. Then begins the labourious task of filling in all the units, and we are very grateful that the men who work in the cemetery have come to help us. The wind makes this a challenge; more than once, we get a faceful of dirt. By noon, everything is filled in, the site is clean and tidy, and the equipment is all on the dock. We devour the bannock that one of the workers made, and then we boat everything back across the river and pack it in the van.

In the afternoon, we load all the kitchen equipment into the van. In the evening, Karmen and I make sure that all the notes are in order, and then they and the artifacts also go into the van, ready for an early start tomorrow morning.

Thursday, August 2:
Sunny and warm.

It's farewell to Stanley Mission for another summer. We've had a very successful excavation, as we've gathered a lot of data about the age and construction (and possibly the destruction) of the house. Karmen certainly has lots of material for her thesis.

Is this Murdoch McKenzie's house? If you compare what we found with the description of Mr. McKenzie's house, then the answer is, no.

Murdoch McKenzie’s house	“Our” house
The house was “very old.”	The exclusive use of machine-cut nails in the original construction indicates that it was built sometime during the last half of the 19th century.
The door is in the south wall facing the church.	The door is in the east wall facing the river.
There is a door in the west wall leading to an attached lean-to.	There is no evidence of a door in the west wall, or of the existence of a lean-to attached to the house.

For me, this is my last summer here as a working archaeologist as I am retiring at the end of September. However, I will be back to visit. I have many friends here and I love this country very much—how can I not return?