Historian will speak about construction techniques

MANALAPAN - Garry Wheeler Stone, the historian at Monmouth Battlefield State Park, Route 33, will give a presentation at the BRAVO (Battlefield Restoration and Archaeolog-ical Volunteer Organization) meeting on Feb. 28 titled "From Mold to Post, Reverse Engineering Post-in-the-ground Buildings" covering methods archaeol-ogists use to decipher the carpentry of vanished frontier buildings.

From the dissection of several 17th century "pole-built" structures in historic St. Mary's City in Maryland, Stone will illustrate how the methods he and his team used evolved.

"Learning to read the dirt was a first step for understanding 17th century frontier construction and reconstructing the buildings of Maryland's first capital," said Stone.

At St. John's, the home of the colony's secretary and later the residence of Gov. Charles Calvert, the team found post molds - the humus remnants of rotted posts - that showed how an English-style house on a stone foundation gained "post-in-the-ground" frontier-style additions.

The St. Mary's City archaeologists developed more accurate techniques while excavating the four buildings of Garrett Van Sweringen's Council Cham-ber Inn. All of the buildings had wooden post foundations.

The archaeological site of Capt. William Smith's clapboard ordinary was next.

"The archaeology of the building reveals that Smith or his journeyman was a reasonably competent carpenter," said Stone.

Irregular post molds indicate mistakes in construction.

Lastly, Van Sweringen's new ordinary was a post-in-the-ground tavern that was briefly used as a printer's shop. Its post molds reveal that the ordinary was an unusual structure with different construction than the norm for the period and built on a slope.

Stone concluded from the excavations that the best dimensions of post-built frontier structure come not from the tops of the post molds, but deeper in the ground where the timber remnants have been protected.

BRAVO, a nonprofit volunteer group, primarily assists the state in restoring state-owned and state-operated historic military sites through archaeological surveys, primary source research, cleaning, cataloguing and analyzing artifacts, computer data analysis and report preparation.

Currently, BRAVO is conducting several archaeological surveys at Mon-mouth Battlefield State Park in Freehold Township and Manalapan among other sites. For further information, visit the Web site at: http://bravo_nj.tripod.com.

BRAVO members meet monthly in Old Scots Hall at Old Tennent Presby-terian Church, Tennent Road. For more information call Dan Sivilich at (732) 780-1091 in the evening, or contact Garry Wheeler Stone during the day at (732) 780-5782.