As we begin our "next to last week" of this five-week project, I take the opportunity to recognize the students who have worked so diligently over the past three weeks -- they are a superb crew. Those of you who have followed the progress of the excavations in person or via the web pages or both will note how much they have accomplished over the past three weeks. What is perhaps not always so obvious to visitors is how much they have learned about "how to do archaeology" over the past few weeks. Our progress and success proceeds at a rapid pace because they have now become "archaeological field technicians" instead of just students. My thanks to them all -- it ain't easy doing archaeology.

The photographs of the day show our progress -- but aren't the greatest in terms of photos. At 4:00 pm in the Old City Cemetery, we have half our excavations in sun and half in shade -- not the greatest circumstances for photography of large areas. So, bear with us on the photos -- maybe the explanations will work. Maybe on Tuesday but more probably for the Wednesday report, we'll have some morning photos when the light is more even across the excavation areas.

The first photo of the day shows the current excavations on the "north" foundation wall of the church -- the blue lines show the excavated portions of the foundation (dotted lines show the areas in progress or areas where the stones were missing). We now have essentially the entire 40-foot wide front wall of the church exposed.

The second photo shows the double foundation wall at the front of the church (if you look at the first photo, a notation shows the angle of the shot). They yellow-green lines at the top of the photo show the outside foundation wall of the church -- the same color lines at the center of the photo show the interior foundation wall. The dotted blue line shows what we had originally interpreted as a basement or cellar for the church -- after further excavation of the excavation unit at the bottom of the photo, we now think that it is more likely a "clay pit" used to extract clay for brick production for the church. The builders of the church would have needed a large amount of clay to produce the bricks for the church -- we think they fired the bricks near the church site. Given the circular shape of this feature, we now think it was not a cellar or basement for the church, but rather a pit excavated for clay during the church construction -- upon demolition of the church, this pit that was beneath the church floor ended up being filled with debris from the church destruction.

The blue question marks (???) mark some large limestone blocks -- we have left them in place for now because we aren't quite certain about them. There are two possibilities for them: (a) they are limestone blocks tumbled into the "pit" from the adjacent foundation when the church was demolished; or (b) they are limestone blocks still where they were placed by the builders for two pillars that supported the back of the belltower. If we take these cut limestone blocks out without recording them first -- we will not ever be sure if they were placed intentionally or unintentionally. I think perhaps the most important thing that many of the students learn during the field school is that we have to be VERY very careful in the digging -- we map and record lots of limestone blocks, brick clusters, and other things that turn out to be "nothing." But, for those few limestone blocks or brick clusters or "other things" than turn out to "really be something" -- it outlines the difference between the casual digger and the science of archaeology.

The next photo shows where we have opened a new excavation unit today. We need to determine whether that interior foundation wall extends all the way across the church -- we think it does. But, as you will note from this photo -- this 1x2 meter excavation unit will find another section of the east foundation wall (in the yellow green) and will find whether that interior foundation wall actually runs all the way (in the blue).

Again emphasizing the importance of careful archaeological research, we began investigating a scatter of limestone and brick in one of the excavations on the north wall -- this unimpressive little feature turned into another large posthole on the front of the church (similar to the one featured on Friday's daily journal). The next photo shows the progress on this feature -- and gives me a chance to talk about another aspect of excavation. When folks dig a hole to install a very large post or pillar, they dig a hole -- they then install the post or pillar, and then they fill the "post hole" back in around the post with dirt and other stuff. Many of you have probably done this. For archaeologists, this ends up with two parts of a feature -- a posthole and a postmold. The "posthole" is what the builders dug to place the post. The "postmold" is where the post actually sat in that hole until it was removed or rotted away. You might ask -- why do we care about the difference between a "posthole" and a "postmold"? For us - it's important. The artifacts in the posthole part reflect when the post was placed -- the artifacts in the postmold part reflect when the post was removed or rotted.

So, now we have two large posthole features to interpret -- and we have about four other POSSIBLE similar features to examine along the front of the church. The feature above is at the top of the photo -- the Friday feature is at the bottom. More to be featured later this week. Also noted in this photo is our latest excavation unit trying to confirm precisely where the west foundation of the church is located. More on that on Tuesday.

And finally, a crew photo -- these are the project staff and crew making these daily updates possible. Janine -- our student who is also an RN at the local hospital had to be at her "other job" at the time of the photo. We'll feature her on another day!

As the days pass quickly, feel free to visit us. The discoveries will continue daily!