Clues About the Past from Stains on the Ground
This photograph shows you what is left of a wooden building after 300 years. The wood rots and the building disintegrates, or falls apart. This is a photograph of something archaeologists call a posthole. When this building was built, large lengths of wood called posts were put in the ground to hold the building up. After 300 years, the wood has all rotted away. All that is left is a dark spot in the ground where the wood used to be. Can you see the posthole in this picture? Many times, this is all that archaeologists can find to tell them where a building used to be. Historians and archaeologists have worked together to figure out what St. Mary's City might have looked like. Here is a drawing of what they think:
Click on the picture for a larger image.
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