While yours truly continued to try to deal with identifying the features, most of the crew worked on re-excavating six of our units from last year -- about 258 cubic feet of dirt. At 8:30 this morning, they were starting the task...

By 2:30 pm, the last wheelbarrows of dirt were being removed...

While running an errand up at our field house, I startled 15 turkeys hiding out in the brush along one of the fencelines -- they made a hasty departure across the north forty.

Meanwhile, our massive "hydration" strategy to make the features more visible worked nicely. Heavily soaked with about 60 gallons of water, re-trowelled to a fresh surface, and allowed to dry -- the units below revealed the wall trenches.

For the less archaeologically inclined, I've highlighted the 10 trenches below in yellow -- you can compare to the photo above to see if you can see the faint but very visible outlines of these trenches.

The photograph below shows the "new" units on the left and the re-excavating units from last year on the right.

Here is the image edited -- showing the "new" wall trenches in yellow and the perpendicular wall trenches from last year in blue. We'll be opening several additional units in the next day or three to connect the lines in between.

With a much larger number of units opened -- we had to expand our coverage with plastic today. As we open additional units, opening and closing down each day will get more complex -- with multiple overlapping sheets of plastic.

On Thursday, we will re-excavate the final set of units from last year on the corner of this building -- and begin excavation of the new wall trenches. I'll be working to clean up our big pit feature and firepits for excavation in the next couple of days as well. These features will undoubtedly reveal some interesting artifacts.

More on Thursday!