empty wooded coast before you could see the jutting point of Lawton, which was like a splinter stuck between the larger harbors of Stone Harbor and Boxham-by-Sea. It was in this area that the Mather House was located. Now abandoned, it had been built by the Chandlers some time after their house, and it had taken on the name of the owners during the nineteenth century. I was eager to find out who owned it now, as it would be a real opportunity to compare two households from roughly the same period, especially as the first few occupants of the Mather House had been members of the Chandler family too.
To my right, only a meter or two from the side of the house, was the collection of squares and regular rectangles of blue tarps that covered my units, held down by rocks. These were on the right side of the house, and at the edge of the property, demarked on that side by a coated chain link fence. I could just about make out the infernal Bellamy’s house across the street through the trees on our side. Ruin their view, indeed. I could hear the sound of dogs barking.
I took another sip of my coffee, walked back, and began pulling the tarps away to get a look at the units. I had to reach down into a unit and fish out one anchor rock that must have slid in overnight. Meter-square holes in the ground, at most maybe half a meter in depth, the different layers of dirt stacked up, the oldest at the bottom, the newest at the top, looking like an uneven sort of layer cake. Imagine a laundry pile, I always told my freshmen, where the things on the bottom are what got thrown in first, on Monday, and the things on the top were thrown in last. Now in archaeology you might not know how much time has passed between one layer and another, but you can usually assume that the stuff on the bottom is older than the stuff on top, unless there’s been some catastrophic event—like landscaping or an earthquake—that’s moved things out of order. Kind of like me rooting through the laundry on Thursdays to see if I have already worn my favorite shirt. By the way things looked here, based on the artifacts we were finding, we were probably looking at a late-eighteenth-century living surface in this unit, and Meg, as usual, was a bit farther down from that, possibly to the mid-eighteenth century, right above the burn layer that we knew was the result of the fire in the 1730s. We also had a brick feature there that looked suspiciously like a house foundation; perhaps it was the foundation of the wing that had been here once upon a time.
I squatted down to stare at one particularly interesting stratum, a layer of soil that looked like clean sand, and tried to figure out what it could be, when I heard something that I thought at first was a seagull. I then dismissed that notion in favor of a slipping fan belt, but was forced to the realization that it was a woman’s voice. It was directed at me.
“Look, I can see you over there! Don’t you think it’s a little childish to be avoiding me like this? I really think we need to talk about this situation.”
Situation? I looked around to see whether she wasn’t actually speaking to someone else.
“Yes, you. Come on over, I’m not going to bite.”
Maybe not, lady, I thought, but I might. I couldn’t help myself; I didn’t have any idea of what the problem was and I was already predisposed against her. I hadn’t gotten a good look at her before now, but that didn’t help either. Her demeanor was one of aggression uncomfortably married to cuteness. Her hair was a frizzy, nondescript brown, cut short in a way that did nothing for her round face; some of it wascaught up in a pink scrunchy on top of her head. Her stocky posture was like that of a bulldog, her jejune bangs and topknot reminded me of a Shih Tzu, and the way she couldn’t quite keep her mouth closed, showing her pointy little teeth, was distinctly puglike.
I got up and dusted myself off automatically even though it was still too early
To my right, only a meter or two from the side of the house, was the collection of squares and regular rectangles of blue tarps that covered my units, held down by rocks. These were on the right side of the house, and at the edge of the property, demarked on that side by a coated chain link fence. I could just about make out the infernal Bellamy’s house across the street through the trees on our side. Ruin their view, indeed. I could hear the sound of dogs barking.
I took another sip of my coffee, walked back, and began pulling the tarps away to get a look at the units. I had to reach down into a unit and fish out one anchor rock that must have slid in overnight. Meter-square holes in the ground, at most maybe half a meter in depth, the different layers of dirt stacked up, the oldest at the bottom, the newest at the top, looking like an uneven sort of layer cake. Imagine a laundry pile, I always told my freshmen, where the things on the bottom are what got thrown in first, on Monday, and the things on the top were thrown in last. Now in archaeology you might not know how much time has passed between one layer and another, but you can usually assume that the stuff on the bottom is older than the stuff on top, unless there’s been some catastrophic event—like landscaping or an earthquake—that’s moved things out of order. Kind of like me rooting through the laundry on Thursdays to see if I have already worn my favorite shirt. By the way things looked here, based on the artifacts we were finding, we were probably looking at a late-eighteenth-century living surface in this unit, and Meg, as usual, was a bit farther down from that, possibly to the mid-eighteenth century, right above the burn layer that we knew was the result of the fire in the 1730s. We also had a brick feature there that looked suspiciously like a house foundation; perhaps it was the foundation of the wing that had been here once upon a time.
I squatted down to stare at one particularly interesting stratum, a layer of soil that looked like clean sand, and tried to figure out what it could be, when I heard something that I thought at first was a seagull. I then dismissed that notion in favor of a slipping fan belt, but was forced to the realization that it was a woman’s voice. It was directed at me.
“Look, I can see you over there! Don’t you think it’s a little childish to be avoiding me like this? I really think we need to talk about this situation.”
Situation? I looked around to see whether she wasn’t actually speaking to someone else.
“Yes, you. Come on over, I’m not going to bite.”
Maybe not, lady, I thought, but I might. I couldn’t help myself; I didn’t have any idea of what the problem was and I was already predisposed against her. I hadn’t gotten a good look at her before now, but that didn’t help either. Her demeanor was one of aggression uncomfortably married to cuteness. Her hair was a frizzy, nondescript brown, cut short in a way that did nothing for her round face; some of it wascaught up in a pink scrunchy on top of her head. Her stocky posture was like that of a bulldog, her jejune bangs and topknot reminded me of a Shih Tzu, and the way she couldn’t quite keep her mouth closed, showing her pointy little teeth, was distinctly puglike.
I got up and dusted myself off automatically even though it was still too early
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