Report of the Archaeological Investigations of the New Castle Court ...

NEW CASTLE COURT HOUSE PLAZA
NEW CASTLE, DELAWARE
5.0 INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
The pollen samples suggest that lowlying wetlands were situated close to the property when the
cellar hole was backfilled. Such a wetland is illustrated on the Latrobe survey map and was
known as Deakyne’s swamp. The swamp was located to the south of the court house property,
behind the buildings situated on Delaware Street. The swamp was infilled circa 1831 by the New
Castle and Frenchtown Railroad and was located where the Battery Park is today (Heite and Heite
1989:35-36).
5.3.3 PALISADE
Three palisade trenches were documented within the exposed sections of the excavated plaza.
Two of these trenches, Features 24/29 and 27/45, appear to be parallel with the southern façade of
the Court House, while the third trench, Feature 39, is orientated perpendicularly on the east side.
Overall the parallel trench lines are nearly 80 feet in length and are truncated on the west by the
brick foundation wall described above and by an erosional feature on the east. The intact western
edge is also interesting, because the trench appears to flare slightly to the south toward Delaware
Street. The profile indicates that the trench was square cut, ranging in depth from 2.40 to 1.32 ft.
from west to east. In the sampled portions of the palisade line on both the east and west plaza post
mold impressions in the shape of split-logs were in evidence, while similar stains were noted in
the northern palisade line (Feature 27) identified during stripping. No artifacts were recovered
from the sectioned portions of the features and this may be indicative of the early dates of these
features. Supporting this notion is the fact that other documented features were intrusive into the
palisade line.
Palisade or fortification lines have been archeologically documented on a number of sites
throughout the east and these can provide comparative data for the interpretation of the features at
the New Castle Court House. The palisade line uncovered at the Pilgrim settlement of Cushnoc
on the Kennebec River in Maine was apparently constructed of split logs or palings dating to the
period 1620 to 1630. Cushnoc’s palisade represents an early use of spit log construction, but one
that was apparently well-known in the English colonies, used at Pentagoet in Maine and in Ulster,
Ireland (Cranmer 1990:64; Faulkner and Faulkner 1987). A palisade line constructed of triangular
rails set upright and contiguous in a ditch was uncovered at The Clifts Plantation in Virginia. This
palisade line dates to circa 1675, and was intended as a modest deterrent from Susquehannock
raids (Neiman 1980:19-20). At Yeardley/Pierce Tobacco Bawn (44SP65) in Flowerdew Hundred
a similarly-constructed palisade enclosure was excavated dating from the period 1619 to 1630,
with strong evidence that the defenses were actually built in the two-year period from 1621 to
1623 (Deetz 1993:25-39; Hodges 1993:188-195). Excavations at the mid-seventeenth century
Pope’s Fort at St. Mary’s City uncovered a palisade trench approximately 10 inches wide with a
depth of approximately 2.3 ft. into subsoil (Miller 1986:53-54). A firing step was also
hypothesized at Pope’s Fort, and the arrangement of parallel palisade lines at the New Castle
Court House may be indicative of a firing step on the interior of the palisade.
The fortification wall at Pope’s Fort was interpreted to represent a three-sided enclosure with one
primary and two secondary bastions. At Cushnoc, Clifts, and Flowerdew, the enclosure was
found to be square or rectangular with two bastions placed at opposite corners. In some cases the
bastions were quite small, and were intended only to provide clear fields of fire along the longer
palisade walls. While no bastions were identified on the plaza at the New Castle Court House,
there is a slight southern flare or curving of the palisade line at its western end, suggesting a
possible bastion at this location. Unfortunately, since the southeastern corner was not discovered,
and no other corners were excavated, we can only hypothesize on bastion placement. Additional
palisade sections may still be present to the west of the plaza, in the grassy section of the New
Castle Green.
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