Finally, I can report another lovely day for archaeology in the 'Boro! After a couple of days of on-and-off rain, we were (almost literally) giddy with excitement just to have a chance to excavate the whole day without getting soaked once. So, for the first time since Monday, a few "photos of the day."

The photo below shows the exposure of about 1/3 of the front (north) foundation wall of the church just before lunch today -- after cleanup.

The photo below -- taken from the same vantage point -- shows the excavation area as it appeared on Monday. Archaeology is slow and tedious -- but a group of students working carefully and learning quickly produces great results.

After lunch, we started stripping the sod from a series of three 2x2 meter square excavation units to expose the remainder of the belltower foundation and to look for the foundation of the stairs leading into the entry hall of the church. Given that this constituted stripping sod from about 130 square feet, we hadn't anticipated any great new discoveries today from this operation. But, unexpectedly, just beneath the sod, we found what is either a brick "patio" or brick pathway in front of the church (shown in the photograph below). One never knows what might be concealed beneath a tiny bit of grass. If the weather holds, we will report more on this feature on Friday.

A couple of interesting "artifact notes" for the day. In the southernmost excavation units (searching for the south foundation wall), two exciting types of "architectural" artifacts were discovered.

The first discovery was several large fragments of wall plaster -- an artifact indicating that the interior walls of the church were covered with a prepared and smoothed surface (instead of just brick). We had suspected they were, but none of the documents record that information. The photo below shows a fragment of the finished interior plaster (upper left) and the reverse unfinished side (upper right). This discovery also explained one of the questions about the "artifacts" we've been finding. We have been recovering a large number of freshwater gastropods (the tiny corkscrew shaped snails that live in our local streams -- lower center in the photo below) from many of the excavation units. How and why so many aquatic snails got to the church site was a question we had no answers for until today. The fragments of wall plaster discovered today include tiny gastropods -- we now believe the sand used to mix the plaster and probably the mortar for the church was gathered from a nearby stream (perhaps Lytle Creek). The gastropods were in the sand gathered, and ended up in both the plaster and mortar -- most of that plaster and mortar has "rotted away" leaving the tiny water snails for us to find. One mystery solved!

The second "architectural discovery" was a fragment of decorative earthenware (pottery) in an unusual form (shown in the photo below). While not entirely confirmed yet, it appears to be about 1/4 of a fairly fancy doorknob -- probably produced in the first half of the 1800s. We'll be watching carefully in that excavation unit for the rest of that artifact! A possibly similar doorknob is shown in the second photo below.