Craig Chartier and his assistant Dan Zoto sift through a pile of dirt with a handmade screen. They turn up bits of glass, pieces of clay pots, brick fragments and mortar at the Taylor-Bray Farm in Yarmouth. The farm not only houses animals, it is also a working archaeological site.
There are two archaeological sites on the property, one is a Native American site with the oldest artifacts, and the other is the remains of the colonial home of Richard Taylor, a settler who moved to Yarmouth around the early 1640s.
Chartier said that there’s a written record about the various former colonial residents who lived in this area, and the bits and pieces that they find in the ground bring those people to life. For example, their research says that Richard Taylor settled the property. And Chartier thinks he may not have been well liked by everyone. When a local man died, the man left a note in his will saying he owed money to Richard Taylor, and referred to Taylor as a “poor man.”
“It seems like this guy is kind of taking a dig, a 17th century dig at Richard Taylor,” Chartier said. “When we did the archaeology, we actually found silver spur buckles and silver buttons, so it doesn’t seem like he was that poor. So he might have been meaning that Richard Taylor was poor in morals or that he had some run-ins or something with Richard Taylor, and I guess was taking one last shot in his will, from the grave or beyond the grave at Richard Taylor.”
This property, and all the stories and artifacts it contains in its dirt, was almost lost. Chartier says the town of Yarmouth bought the property back in the 1980s, and saved it from conversion into a housing development. Today, it’s a community farm, run completely by volunteers. They tend to the farm’s garden and the animals living there. That makes for an interesting working environment for the archaeologists.
“Sometimes it’s awkward, and sometimes we go right and deal with it directly. I think two years ago, Craig and Dan were out in the pastures with 2000 pound Scottish Highland cattle standing right next to them,” said Taylor-Bray Association archaeology coordinator, Jack Duggan.
Volunteers make this place run. Jane Seymour is one of them, and she loves working with the animals at the farm.
“The peace and serenity is amazing. There’s barn swallows, there’s hawks, there’s osprey, just great,” Seymour said.
That’s what Chartier and Zoto say too. They welcome volunteers of all ages to assist in their fieldwork, and Zoto says they’ve had hundreds come out over the years.
“One of my, my favorite parts about working here at the farm is working with the volunteers and really watching their skills and their knowledge develop, “Zoto said. “And their enthusiasm and you know, bringing other people down with them to check it out.”
One of this year’s community digs begins on June 14th. The focus will be on the Native Americans who lived in the area long before Richard Taylor ever set foot here. Chartier says that this they’re focusing more on the prehistoric site.
“We started out there a few years ago, doing a big survey just trying to locate anything that was out there,” Chartier said. “And then we found a lot of stuff, and we came back and started focusing on specific areas out there, and we found what we think is part of a Native American house, we found a couple of concentrations of spear points, and cooking fires that date back about 3500 years ago.”
“Who knew when we first started to get involved down here what kind of archaeology, what archaeology would end up telling us,” Duggan said. He further described Taylor-Bray Farm as a hidden gem.
Some of the artifacts found at Taylor-Bray Farm will be on display at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, and dig organizers expect to add to the collection with this year’s work.
For more information about the Taylor-Bray Farm and to find out more about the upcoming community dig, visit their website at taylorbrayfarm.org