As our last fews days of the summer field project wind down, we are staying extra busy gathering as much information as possible -- short lunches and a lot of hard work on a 90+ day.
A small thunderstorm passed through before dawn this morning. Many of our neighbors on the property were out and about enjoying the water this morning -- including this bunny.
The milkweed is starting to bloom after the rain -- attracting all kinds of insects including these two butterflies.
And a praying mantis was wandering around the sweetpeas.
Of course, the welcome rain did mean a quick chore this morning bailing the water from our plastic...
'Twas a hot and hard-working day, so the photos and comments will be a bit brief for tonight! In order to interpret the architecture of this large building, we need to have a good handle on all four walls -- particularly the corners. So, we've focused on opening a few more small excavation areas to make sure that we have a solid idea of the corners. For the times, this was an exceptionally large building -- about the equivalent of 1250 square feet.
On the southwest corner, we opened a small 1x2 meter unit to catch the ends of two wall trenches. In the photo below the large trench at lower left is the last version of the west wall and the one on the right is the last version of the south wall. Nice corner confirmed in this area.
In the very end of the south wall trench (the one on the right in the photo above), we identified a small cache of carbonized corncobs. This appears to have been an intentional cache -- perhaps a dedicatory offering at the time the building was erected.
On the southeast corner, we excavated two adjacent 1x1 meter units to clarify the ends of the east wall. We managed to find the ends of two of the east wall trenches as shown below.
On the north wall, we continued excavations of two of the trenches. What we had originally identified as a single trench is now clearly two trenches -- one with a carboned log set in the edge. In the photo below, the arrow is pointing at the charred log set in the edge of the trench.
This is very similar to a pattern we saw last year on the south wall...
Another long day ahead for tomorrow -- although given the weather forecast, we may be working in our lab washing artifacts for part of the day. We'll welcome the rain.