Perry House Magnetic Susceptibility Surveys

Hello everyone, over the last few weeks Beau Kromberg, Travis Corey, and myself have carried out some remote sensing at the Perry House site in Grand Blanc to assist in targeting the archaeological recovery work there. The Perry House was likely the second settlement in Grand Blanc and one of the earliest American homesteads in the Saginaw Valley (1834).

Michigan Archaeological Society member Don Simmons indicated that there was a high possibility of an early midden behind the home as well as a structure in the front lawn. Beau and I surveyed the west lawn with 2 meter intervals and the next week Travis and I tackled the back and front lawns. The higher the readings, the greater the possibility of encountering fire-altered soils and metal artifacts. The results are all oriented north and the grid is in meters.

The Perry House in Grand Blanc Township

Again, like the Rogers Site, I had to remove outliers that were twice the average reading and make a second layer. The all points included layer is on top as a transparency in many of these maps so that all of the significant readings are visible.

The West Lawn of the Perry House. The Home sets behind on a very visible glacial landform with a creek and extensive bottomlands wrapping around it. 

The western portion of the south lawn.

North Lawn of the Perry House

Steltzriede Farmstead Part Deux

Tuesday Mandy K. from MSU assisted me with taking some more high resolution readings at the Steltzriede site in Saginaw. Jeff got some help from Travis C. from CMU, Beau K. from WSU and Sam B on the ground-truthing.

The ms2 results are fairly interesting, suggesting anomalies between (and likely under) the driveways. Some of the clusters are large enough to be features or scatters. The large amount of metal said to be in the yard fill certainly creates some background noise, though I look forward to what is found in the ground-truthing.


 IDW Interpolation Results
 

Close-up of anomaly #1

  10m

Close-up of anomaly #2

  10m

Overview

  20m

Overview (IDW)

  20m

Overview

  20m

Chesaning Backyard Ms2 Survey

Laid out a grid saturday with CMU alumni, Travis Corey and even dug a mini-unit (50x50cm shovel test). Interesting data results, some bordering on abstract art that would definitely have sold well in the 60s and 70s.

 

9m

 

 

 

 

 

 

9m

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The southern most brown spot in the northern "cluster" was excavated by a 50x50cm shovel test, resulting in the discovery of over a dozen and a half nails, saw cut bone, whiteware, slag, a possible flake, and fire-altered rock.

9m

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St. Charles MS2 work

The Ms2 uncovered some interesting signatures out at a site in the St. Charles area on a branch of the Bad River. According to oral histories, this was the site of several farm related buildings. The data near the standing barn is so dramatically high that I had to classify the data twice, once with all of the points included, and another time with the outliers removed. I made the "outlier removed set" translucent and set it over the original layout so we can still see the high reading cluster near the barn.

As soon as we began laying out the grid, we stumbled upon a cluster of glass and metal, some which is pictured below. This area had been obscured from the sun by a semi trailer for many years, preventing grass from covering the space. One of the very high readings did indeed come from this location.

    20 m

    20 m

 

    20 m

 

Interpolation from Swan Creek Site

Here are the results from the swan creek surveys. All maps are oriented north.

50 meters

Classic inverse distance weighting interpolation.

50 meters

This is using a triangular interpolation calculation on the same data.

 

50 meters

50 meters

Anyone else see the viking longship? No? Joking aside, those look like some pretty consistent signatures. I might have some suggestions regarding where the Castle museum should dig this fall/next spring.