What would he sight on?

Center of doorway. At least thats what Thoreau did when he surveyed Walden Pond.

If it was me, nearest corner

> Would he have sighted on the estimated center of the house, the nearest corner, the chimney, or what?

Use all of them you can think of, come up with search positions and spiral your with out from there.

At least that's what I do when I'm on the hunt for something elusive....;-)

Cheers,

Radar

Is the question about the location of the section line, or of the old building? I'm thinking it's the old building you're looking for, and you know where the section line is. It seems that at 50 chains he sighted the building N43E, then at the edge of the woods (58 chains), he sighted back S70E to the same building. I'd pick the c/l of the structure since it's kind of far.

There is the triangle to at least get close. Then get some college kids with shovels and start digging.

Sounds like a fun project. Never did anything like that. Archeologist can cause some considerable grief around here, so maybe there is a niche there (once I take away their Garmin's)

The archaeologist knows approximately where the trading post was. They have done a preliminary sweep with a metal detector (says it "goes crazy") to define a region of interest, but only picked up artifacts on the surface so far (cultivated farm field). She expects the grant to be approved soon; shoestring budget, mostly volunteer labor, and a deadline of planting time or else wait until after harvest.

I'm just checking what information I can come up with out of general interest. I'd like to determine that the house mentioned was or was not the trading post she thinks she has found. There might be more than one building (residence and store) and she might not have found both.

Whether I (non-LS) could survey in from section corners is questionable. Most of the surrounding land has been under essentially one ownership since 1856, and the nearest quarter corner falls in an open field. The section corner to the north was probably taken out by the river. It isn't like I could go out to a fence corner or the middle of gravel road intersection and find a stake for a corner. I might have to just work with Google Earth and the Garmin from more distant corners. I plan to get to that county's courthouse and do some snooping before dig time.
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I participated in a dig last summer that learned a little about a site that was suspected of being a native village. Turns out it was most likely a frequent short-term camp and never a long-term site. I learned a lot about what they pay attention to. Soil type, granularity, and color vs a chart are noted carefully for every layer and wall profiles are photographed. Every teaspoon of dirt is sifted through a screen (no fun when you hit damp clay), and in some cases much of it is washed to find tiny objects like beads and seeds.

I was very interested when they said their GPS guy was going to record the locations of our dig "units" (1x2 meter holes). Turns out he had a mapping grade GPS and didn't take any particular care with getting the data. I would have averaged more than his half-minute and came back at a different time to compare. When I asked if accuracy was affected by holding the unit horizontally versus upright, he didn't seem interested in the question. I know that makes a significant difference in long-term averages with my Garmin, which I blame on lopsided sensitivity to reflections.

They have a total station, and I'm hoping that they will use it on the trading post project to record the relative positions of features and artifacts. It's more likely they will tape it.

Still sounds kind of fun. But there must be a reason they are looking into this old building. Is this some kind of development, private, public? Farmer looking to sell? Why would they pick this corn field? Or just a fishing expedition that some tree huggers got wacky funding for?

I'm no expert in sub-surface sonar type stuff, but I'm pretty sure that there is alot of pretty sophisticated easy to use equipment that goes 3-5 ft (or deeper) with some pretty good accuracy. That would narrow it down, and they'd obviously need some control that could be duplicated, and a map of some kind to show the powers that be what they found. Along with the liability of course.

But for just a bearing call to an WP, I'd go with c/l. How big could the building be - 20x20, maybe more.

It's entirely academic interest. No land deals involved. The location of the building(s) and anything short of finding human remains would have no legal consequences I know of. Even bones could be re-buried with proper protocols (per NAGPRA) in cases where the location is being altered for some big purpose. It's been done for highways.

Historians and historical archaeologists would like to know more about the interactions of the traders and settlers with Native Americans, which can in part be deduced by the kinds of artifacts and debris left around the trading post. Also, what they can learn about the native culture and habits of the time (much of which has been lost through all that the tribes have been put through), etc. What were they eating? What were they trading for? What did they sell to the traders? Where was the village that brought the trader to the area? A lot of this can be learned from an artifact-rich area even if they don't know exactly where the building was.

Ground penetrating radar is effective for some archaeological purposes, but is expensive on the scale these folks are operating on. They probably would not bring it in unless it was going to solve some major question. I'm not sure that it would locate the building if there was no stone foundation.

Out of curiosity, what sections involved, along with Township, Range and PM.

I mailed some info to your profile address. I'm not sure I should post it on an open forum, as they are semi-guarded about exact location of archaeological sites.

Agree with not revealing too much. Strange things happen when people find out where something is, was or may be soon. They are fortunate to actually get the landowner to agree to the search.

We have traditional native sites dating from 1860 to about 1865. In the same area, we also have sites that date back approximately 10,000 years. Lots of them. Every significant road project cannot start until the archaeologists do their thing completely. Sometimes, the bury everything they find deeper so that it is still there, but, below any level impacted by the road project. Occasionally, they remove some things and bury the remainder.

I started to do the math but then realized that the bearings are nearest degree and the distances are likely approximate also. Exactly what point on a building that was sighted is pretty much irrelevant.

> Would he have sighted on the estimated center of the house, the nearest corner, the chimney, or what?

Well, in 1843, the house would most likely have been a log cabin, wouldn't it have been? In Iowa, it surely had a fireplace, as well. If the log cabin was a larger two-room structure, I'd expect that the fireplace was approximately in the middle of the cabin, not on an exterior wall. So, when a surveyor took a bearing to the house, I'll bet it was to a stubby chimney approximately at the middle of the structure.

With std error 0.5 degree, a 1-sigma error ellipse has semimajor axis 5.4 ft at 94 degrees, affecting mostly distance from the section line. The semiminor axis 3.3 ft affects location along the line. (Not enough measurements to define a 95% confidence ellipse.)

So if the section and quarter corners were there to measure from, a 3.3-ft sigma would make it a valid but not terribly important question as to where on a 20-ft or larger cabin we were measuring to.