Today was much more productive than I had anticipated in terms of "new discoveries" as we begin to close down our investigations -- despite the weather. The day opened cloudy and incredibly "muggy" -- I was already sticky at 7:30 -- it got muggier as the day went on.

However, overcast is great for photography -- our first photo of the day shows the excavations on the north wall of the church at their completion. We won't be doing any further excavation on that end during this project.

Once again, I want to compliment my students -- "The Crew" -- for how much they have learned about working as a "team" over the past several weeks. We were trying to wrap up a tremendous amount of excavation, paperwork, and recording today -- the project director (me) needed help, assistance, and tolerance throughout the day to make that work properly. We also had drizzling rain and the possible threat of thunderstorms starting about 1:30 pm -- the crew knew that we only have a few hours of worktime left. We continued working as best we could to complete excavations, drawings, and records today. As the photo below demonstrates -- one crew continued working throughout the drizzle to finish their excavation (holding an umbrella for several hours is not a fun task!). Others continued working through the drizzle elsewhere. With limited time left, we must appreciate the dedication of the students -- they know what we need to finish by July 3 and are willing to stick through uncomfortable conditions to complete our project goals.

Given the weather forecast, we may be working underneath our shelters and umbrellas to complete our work throughout the day on Tuesday.

At last report (Friday), we had several possibilities for the south foundation wall -- and I wasn't optimistic that we would find anything today that would give any certain answers. We did find more today than I thought we would -- and have some better answers (but not certain).

On Friday, we had a possible portion of the builder's trench for the south wall (see below) -- that remains a possibility, but we had some better discoveries today that may change that interpretation later.

We had a possible set of foundation stones a few feet north of that location that I thought looked good, but seemed to be a north-south wall instead of an east-west (i.e. south foundation) wall. The photo below from Friday shows that set.

In another excavation unit today -- we found what seems to be a foundation wall lined up with the above (see below). It looks very solid as a feature -- so we now have a better option for a "dotted" line in our interpretation of where the south wall was. We won't be able to test that hypothesis further during this project - but we're happy to have found some intact walls to interpret further. If the weather permits on Tuesday, I'll get some better "aerial shots" of the south wall excavation areas to try to explain the two current hypotheses.

And finally, as we begin to finish our investigations, we went back to some of our older excavation units. Some of you may recall the "iron thingies" discovered in our excavations of the church interior from June 16 (see the photo below from that date).

We completed excavation of the postholes surrounding those artifacts this afternoon -- after waiting through an hour or so of rain.

As you can see if you look carefully in the photo below, they appear to be braces for floor joists -- they have a metal plate "stand" at the bottom.

Here's a closeup of one (although not a great photo -- it started raining again!).

From the context, it appears that these floor braces were added after the construction of the church in 1820, but well before the demolition of the church in 1864. Our current (but darn tentative) interpretation is that these features are probably in the part of the church where the extensive and weighty pulpit once stood. The floor perhaps began to sag from the weight of this feature -- and they had to go in and put in some braces for the joists to stop that from happening (many of you may have seen similar types of props in older houses). We'll do some further research, but I suspect that this interpretation will hold true.

For tonight, I shall close down my narrative -- we have a lot of work to finish on Tuesday. I'm hoping that we will have some good weather for at least most of the day to finish out our work.