By Elie Lewin, Hazel Wright, Shemsy Lewis-Mussa
Introduction
This week, we built the foundation and support structure for a mortuary house. Austin has theories about the way mortuary houses would have been constructed, and this lab was designed to test a few of those theories. The archaeological evidence provided was a rectangular house foundation with four corner post holes and one hole in the middle, which we are interpreting as a place for the cremation urn rather than as a post hole. In order to test this theory, Austin enlisted the help of Maeve Gathje, an expert carpenter. We were also provided with some aspen wood cut from the Carleton Arb thanks to Nancy Braker.
Before we started the lab, we set up the tent that was made by last year’s class during their woodworking lab. It was a good way to see what we would be working with, and how the wood aged. Setting up the tent also provided us with some shade, although it wasn’t used much.We all got very involved in the lab work, and the tent was set up some distance away from where we were constructing the house.
Once we set up the tent, we pulled the aspen logs we were using out from the edge of the woods and then Maeve gave a safety demo before we split up into our various groups. For this lab, we had three stations set up, and in theory, two lab groups were working at each station at any one time. In practice, by the third rotation, lab groups had intermingled somewhat, and students worked on a variety of other tasks that weren’t necessarily encompassed in the original stations. The stations were sawing wood and creating planks, debarking the logs, and creating the house foundation.
Wood-cutting (sawing, chopping, splitting)
In order for any of the lab to get started, we first had to select the timbers we would be using. As a class, we picked out the largest log to be chopped into planks, and four medium-large logs to become the posts. Then the sawing group started the process of sawing logs into pieces for posts and planks.
First, 4-foot sections were selected on the four logs destined to become corner posts. One end of each section was marked by cutting a small mark using the small saw, and then that end was sawed off. After one end was sawed, a second mark was made 4 feet from the end. In a (somewhat chaotic) rotation, 4 4-foot-long posts were sawed. The work pace sped up somewhat as time passed and the sawers got more experience. As each post was finished, it was handed off to the debarking crew.
Once all 4 posts were completed, the group switched to sawing 3-foot sections from the largest log for planks. Maeve had marked the log in 3-foot sections while the posts were being cut, so all that was left was fully sawing off those sections. One end was sawed off, and then the middle was cut, so that multiple teams could work on sawing at the same time. Using both the large and small saws, the group was able to finish sawing reasonably quickly.
After logs were sawed into sections, the focus changed to making planks. Students used the ax to mark an initial path, and then used wedges and mallets to split open the logs.
After logs were split due to repetitive hits between people using the wedges and large mallet, split pieces of wood were taken to be cleaned up and so that (assuming that the log is large enough) the curved side of the slit pieces of logs could also be taken off with an axe and then placed in a pile to later be cleaned up at the debarking station and eventually used within the overall structure. The majority of people within the groups would be working on splitting, and we had one person using the axe on the log to remove the other curved face of our split logs. There was a lull in time because we had split all the necessary wood, and axing and debarking both were moving slower than the splitting was, so for some time we were just sitting, not contributing too much to the lab, until we rotated stations again.
Debarking
The first step of the debarking process does not involve any actual debarking! Before debarking can commence on the shave horses, wood must be cleared of its knots to make the debarking process as easy and efficient as possible. For the sake of our lab, we were able to begin debarking while simultaneously removing knots with the axes, because our guest professional woodworker Maeve had some already prepared wood for us with the knots removed. So while some of our group members began using the shave horse to stabilize their logs and the draw knives to take off all of the bark on the logs, myself and other group members were using the axe to hit at knots in the logs until they had no more knots and could be passed off for debarking. After all bark was removed, a lot of the logs were carved using the draw knives on one side of the log so that there was one flat side, and the rest remained curved. These logs were used for the base of the overall structure, with the flat side facing outwards from the structure. In addition, some logs were carved with the draw knives on all 4 sides to create more of a edged-4 sided plank of wood, which were used for our four main corners of our structure. There were even some logs left barked to save time and energy, because they didn’t need to be debarked.
Also at this station was the carving of the narrower ends of the posts. They had to be whittled down to fit into the drilled holes (which were made very quickly with the help of a lovely power drill) which dictated final size. Ends were initially narrowed with an axe by Maeve, then whittled down with woodcarving knives. Eventually, when there was more of a time crunch on getting the posts in, they were put up on the shave horses and the draw knife was used to narrow the ends even faster.
As the number of logs that needed debarking slowed down, and carving finished up, there wasn’t nearly as much work left at the debarking station. So groups E and F had the chance to try, using both the shave horses and knives, but not to the extent that earlier groups had.
Instead, the focus shifted more to carving wooden nails. Using practice pieces of wood, which Maeve provided, a group of students worked on carving nails to hold the house together. Eventually, the group ran out of pre-dried pieces of wood, and shifted to using small scrap pieces of green aspen. It was more difficult to carve using the fresh aspen, since there were knots in the wood that we had to work around. It was also somewhat difficult to maintain a straight cylinder rather than a sharp point, especially for the students who had little to no previous carving experience, which was most of the group. Once 18 nails had been carved, students were free to move on to carving for fun if they wanted to. However, most students instead shifted to work putting up the mortuary house.
Foundation
The initial measurement for the foundation of the mortuary house was 4’ x 5’6”. This measurement seems to have shifted quite a bit with digging and turf removal, most likely due to natural shifting of the earth. Turves were removed to be added to the past Viking-style tent foundation, and also clear a foundation for the new mortuary house. Shovels and turf knives were used to divide up the sod into mostly even blocks. Knives were dug under the sod, and shovels slid under as flat as possible in order to pry up a turf block. The first block was the most difficult to get out, but a rhythm was developed for the rest of the turves. They were laid to the side to later be added to the tent foundation.
Once the foundation was cleared of turf, post-holes needed to be dug. There were general measurements provided from archaeological examples of mortuary houses, but again the dirt and rocks overruled that and dictated the width of post holes. Four were dug, one in each corner, and they were connected by shallow trenches along each side. Each post then sank about a foot into the earth below the original grass level.
The posts were then leveled out, ensuring relative stability, and the extra space in the post holes filled in with the soil. Beams were interested into the posts parallel to the trenches, with the drilled holes and carved ends fitting together nicely. Sills were laid with one flattened side down into the trenches between posts.
Most of the groups came together to put together the rafters of the house. Four pairs of rafters nested together and rested on the longer beams. Many hands held the rafters together as Maeve drilled holes through rafters into beams. Nails were then put into the drilled holes, and wedged solidly in place. The house was relatively stable, and only seemed to stabilize as a few more nails were put in assorted, essential, joints. The base beams were stabilized by wedging bark and pieces of aspen peeled off of the posts into the drilled post holes. And all of the sudden, we had built a house!
Conclusion
This lab consisted almost entirely of experiential data and very little numerical data, because of various reasons, including the lack of uniformity within stations and groups of methods of debarking, axing, sawing, building, etc, and group members would be split helping out with a different task while their group was assigned to a different task at the time. Therefore the spontaneity of the lab called for a lot of variability, and ability to try almost anything you wanted to, whether you preferred debarking because of its satisfying draw, or the solitude in carefully carving wooden nails for the overall structure, or using more strength and taking gratifying swings with either the axe at knots/wood planks, or with the comically large hammer to split wood. I found myself transporting considerably heavy blocks of soil and grass to contribute to the existing layer on our wood-working site that acts as a perfect bench. I did not realize how long I had been doing that until we had transported all of the soil and the structure had been considerably more built. Overall it was a really key lab for fostering collaboration and teamwork skills, but also flexibility in doing a different task since not every task required the entire group, so people would be moving around and helping out in new places with new tasks! The only numerical data gathered included measurements of the dug area for the structure, at the start and at the end, as well as the time taken to undergo the various woodworking processes. So in terms of time taken:
Cutting:
- 13 minutes to cut two 4 ft posts (4 total cuts) with one saw
- 4 minutes to finish the last two posts (4 more cuts) using two saws
- 15 minutes to cut four 3 ft sections from one log (5 cuts)
Total= 32 minutes to make 13 cuts
Splitting:
- 5 minutes to split one 3 ft log
Digging:
- 9 minutes to move two large sections of turf
- 41 minutes to dig trenches and post holes
While in terms of measurements of the trench that was dug for the structure, there are overall measurements from before and after the lab, as well as depth and diameter of post holes:
Initial side by side measurement: 4′ x 5’6″
End of day side by side measurement: 4’1″ x 4’6″
Other final measurement from different group: 51” x 54” (with ideal final measurement supposedly 48” x 66”)
Long sides of the structure were different lengths: 54 in. and 51 in.
Post hole measurements:
| Post Hole 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| Diameter (in) | 14 | 11 | 11 | 13 |
| Depth (in) | 13 | 12 | 12.5 | 12 |
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