<table bgcolor=#eaeaea> <td> <font color=#000000> <blockquote> <p align=justify>
For four weeks this summer, a professor and seven students have been scraping at layers of earth, sifting dirt and uncovering brick structures, animal bones and, recently, deposited artifacts like plastic and carpet at what they believe is the site of the 19th century Hayes sugar house on Avery Island.
This is the seventh summer field school University of Louisiana professor Mark Rees has led, the second at Avery Island, at the request of historian Shane Bernard.
<center><p><a href="http://www.iberianet.com/articles/2008/06/27/news/doc48652cdabdace904813114.txt" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
BY MARY CATHARINE MARTIN
THE DAILY IBERIAN
<!--
Rees said they are fairly sure the site is the sugar house. A more difficult task is determining which structures in the 100-square meter area are the sugar house and which might be something else.
Advertisement
“It’s sort of learn-as-you-dig,” Rees said.
A sugar house is usually next to a sugar mill and is where the sugar was stored, said Rees.
The class found where to dig with the help a magnetometer, which detects disTurbineces and anomalies underground, but they especially relied on the memories of eight-decade Avery Island resident Beb Barrilleaux.
Barrilleaux pointed out an area at which his father had gotten bricks, Rees started scraping and just under the grass, a layer of brick was found. This is where the class is digging.
The sugar house is no longer a complete structure. The trenches the class has dug get down to 3 feet deep.
The dig works out well for McIlhenny Co. and ULL as they help each other with costs. The company learns more about the island’s history and the students get to have hands-on experience learning how to dig and especially how to document. Some of the results are floorplans, profiles of the soil’s colors and textures and photographs of everything.
This is a first-time dig for all of the students.
Danny Reed, a project participant who will graduate in the fall, said the dig and archaeology in general offer “a way to preserve what was for what will be and gives us insight into how people lived in the past.”
“Artifacts are just indicative of the way people ordered their lives. It’s in-teresting to kinda puzzle the pieces together,” he said.
Junior Rachael Farris said archaeology is hard.
“You get delirium, dehydrated,” she said.
“But it definitely is something really interesting to experience.”
Sophomore Tshy Cross is writing up the findings, which students will analyze in the fall.
A week from today, the bricks will be covered with the dirt now piled in pyramids beneath the screens the students used to scrape off artifacts.
Filling the holes serves to protect the structural remains from weather and brick-borrowers “for another day. For another archaeologist, maybe,” said Rees.
Bernard said he’s hoping to do more excavations with ULL in the future.
-->
</td> </table>
