As anticipated, the day started off drizzly -- and stayed that way for much of the day. From beneath shelters and umbrellas or just sittin' in the drizzle, we completed the remainder of our final records today. The photograph to the right shows two of the students at work on measurements and drawings. What is perhaps not obvious in the photo is the rain dripping from the tent shelters onto the soggy crew members! As we prepared to backfill our excavations, making sure that we had recorded everything necessary with drawings, measurements, and photographs was critical. I once again compliment the crew on their very hard work today under very uncomfortable conditions.

I also take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the most important member of my staff -- Mr. Chris Hogan, the project Field Director. For the "learning experience," he volunteered to take on a very difficult task as my assistant on the project. The crew members have put in a solid 40-hours-per-week from 8:00-4:30. Chris and I started work weeks before the class started -- inventorying equipment and supplies, purchasing needed items, hauling equipment, and getting ready. Our workdays start about 7:00 am -- hauling all of our equipment to the site each day and home in our trucks each evening -- and end by 5:00 or 5:30 or 6:00. Running errands in the morning, during the lunch hour, and after 4:30 was another common task -- and meetings on Sunday to plan for the coming week. That sixty-plus hours per week on his part to keep the project moving and working smoothly is responsible in no small for the "grand results" you can examine throughout the web pages. As the photograph below demonstrates, Chris is usually working while I'm wandering around taking photographs and lounging in my hammock -- if you look carefully through the photographs in the web pages, you will often find him in the background of those photos working to keep the project moving along. Chris -- thanks for the great work. Finally, if any of you electronic readers are archaeologists looking to hire a hard-working, fast-learning, and generally darn good field tech -- I suggest you watch for applications from a Mr. Chris Hogan.

On to discoveries... We actually had another interesting discovery today -- despite the fact that we were working on closing down our excavations. As some of you may recall, we were investigating several probable fenceline posts on the east side of the churchlot. I had even postulated our fenceline and gates in the photo below from June 26. Note the large blue arrow pointing to an excavation that we completed and recorded today.

As we completed that excavation, we discovered something intriguing -- and with great promise for future investigations at the site. As the photo below shows -- the deposits in that excavation unit extend over four feet below the current ground level. The upper zone of the excavation is a gravel pathway or drive that we think was installed sometime between 1960 and 1980. Below that was a level of fairly sterile clay (by sterile, archaeologists mean "culturally sterile" in the sense that the zone doesn't contain many artifacts. The intriguing discovery below that was a dense and thick layer of brick rubble -- we think that this probably relates to the construction of the church. The brick fragments in the fill do not have mortar or plaster associated with them -- there are few nails and not much window glass. So, rather than being a deposit of rubble from the church destruction, we think this might relate to the church construction instead.

Unfortunately, we don't have time to further investigate what this deeply buried zone means -- but we can provide a couple of good hypotheses for future investigations. We have some evidence from our investigations that the front yard of the church originally sloped down substantially towards Vine Street -- the old Vine Street may have been two or three feet below where the current pavement sits. Alternatively, this small and deep excavation unit may have intruded into the middle of a trash disposal pit dug during the construction of the church to get rid of brick fragments and other waste. Analysis of the artifacts from the excavation may give us a few more clues about which of these hypotheses might be correct -- but probably some future excavations would be required to really come up with a firm answer.

Finally, thanks to some very very very hard work by the crew in the afternoon after the rain stopped -- we got all of our excavation units closed up. While we are looking forward to the assistance of the Parks & Recreation Department with a couple of tractors with front-end loaders to do the final topping off of our excavations on Wednesday, we moved a gigantic amount of stone, brick rubble, and sifted earth today to ensure that the church features are protected from tractor tires and the elements.

As the photo below illustrates, most of our excavation units were filled with brick and stone rubble from the bottom up to about 20 centimeters below the surface -- the upper level will be filled with sifted earth to facilitate regeneration of the grass. All of our excavations were lined at the bottom with plastic -- so that future investigators of the site will not have any problems finding where we have already excavated.

The larger-scale view below shows how much of our excavation area looked as we closed up today. The front foundation wall of the church is now covered with plastic and enough sifted earth to protect it -- we'll complete filling the area with mechanical assistance on Wednesday. The excavation square in the foreground is the one discussed above that contains the deeply buried questions for the future.

As I close for the evening, please be assured that there are 20 of us sharing two things: (a) soaked, tired, and stressed muscles and backs; and (b) a great sense of accomplishment that it was worth the effort to help add a bit to our knowledge of early Murfreesboro, Rutherford County, and Tennessee.

We'll be at the site tomorrow to finish wrapping things up -- a little bit later than usual at 9:15. And we will hopefully have a chance to leave a bit earlier than usual. Our thanks to all of our interested visitors over the past several weeks. Our final "daily report" for the field part of the project will probably be tomorrow -- the reports from the laboratory analysis will start in a week or two. So please keep checking back!