Today, the weather shifted from "gosh, I'm sticky" to something a lot less pleasant -- something in the range of "I'm the bacon, you're the eggs -- our site if the frying pan." We worked from 8:00 to 1:15 -- and then took lunch. With temperatures rising into the mid-high 90's on site, we moved into the field lab for the afternoon.
Much of our work this morning was slow and tedious -- finishing up details that have to be completed before we can complete our excavations. We focused on some final cleanup on "Feature 4" -- our circular pit feature on the western edge of our dig.
Below, Erica continues excavating down to the bottom of one "corner" of this pit feature.
The cleanup work continues to reveal a definitive edge on this pit -- as shown below in the area cleaned up by Robin this morning.
We should have some nice overhead shots of this feature by Wednesday evening.
Elsewhere on site, Emily and I finished up some mapping, drawings, and photographs on several units like the one shown below that has two large pits and a posthole (outlined in yellow).
Over at our wall-trench house, most of the students worked on excavating the center postholes and sections of wall trenches today.
Below, Jesse finishes up excavations of the large and deep postholes (with assistance from Meagan and Bekah)...
Brandy, Richard and Mike worked on our east wall trench -- confirming our third corner of the house. The yellow outline is the eastern wall trench -- the blue is the apparent end of the south wall trench. We'll have to confirm that on Wednesday.
Directly to the west, Natalie and Lacey worked on another section of the southern wall trench -- exposing the top of the entire trench and the two apparent small logs at the edge of the trench (in blue).
Over on the west wall, Katie, Alex, Tracy and Lynne worked on finishing excavations of several sections of the trenches of this structure.
Out of camera range, Beth, Barrett, and Jonathan opened a new unit to confirm the northwest corner of our house -- more news from them on Wednesday.
Mid-day, we had another visit from several of our much appreciated local Sumner Countians -- Mark McKee Jr., Bill Bell, and John Garrott. These gentleman have helped us out on many occasions during the project.
And then -- we headed to the shade to work on washing artifacts. In the shade up the hill, it was only in the upper 80s -- seemed like air-conditioning after the early afternoon heat. More news on Wednesday...