The day began very pleasantly -- uncommonly cool for June and remained quite comfortable all day. At about 7:00 am, the morning sun streaming through the trees lit up the dew-covered spiderwebs throughout the high grass near our excavation area.
While pleasantly cool for this time of year (and remarkably "un-humid"), the winds were gusty and our tent shelters occasionally were tempted to demonstrate their additional skills as airplanes. Rather than spending the time to stake them down, we decided to work without them for most of the day.
Our project is -- first and foremost -- a course designed to train students in the methods, skills, and techniques they need to perform as professional archaeologists in future careers. As such, our progress during the first week is always slow from the "outside perspective" -- much of our time is taken up with individualized instruction. But, our crews are doing a super job of learning fast, asking questions, and making this intensive experiential learning process a success.
Today, we focused on two specific areas -- surveying equipment and excavation technique. While our "site grid" provides the two dimensions of north-south and east-west, archaeological record keeping requires careful control in three-dimensions (including elevation or depth). We use a transit to maintain that third dimension. Below Jesse records elevation measurements at the transit while Rebekah holds the stadia rod in the distance at our elevation benchmark.
Students also continued practicing their excavation skills -- learning to excavate squares with flat bottoms and straight sides. Below Lacey and Robin are finishing the cleanup on Level 2 of their unit.
Elsewhere on the site, Rebekah checks the depths of their second level to make sure they are ready to close out the paperwork on it and start on Level 3.
During most of they day, students also experienced another common feature of archaeological work -- curious sightseers. We had a number of visitors from the local community today checking out what we were doing. Among the curious sightseers were some local folks with more ominous interests. Noting some twenty large mammals (in other words -- our archaeological team!) staying fairly still in the middle of a field, a dozen of so of the local buzzards soared above us most of the day. A few of them landed nearby to take a closer look.
Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, it isn't hot and humid enough (yet) for us to provide a snack.
Later in the afternoon, we were visited by a local newspaper reporter who examined our excavations and discussed the project with the students. Below, he is chatting with Richard and Natalie while Beth works on her sidewalls at the lower left. At right, Meagan is continuing to level their excavation area.
While we are still working in those upper plowed areas -- as we proceeded "deeper" today, we began to encounter increasing amounts of artifacts left by native peoples over 800 years ago. Fragments of shell-tempered pottery are becoming more common and larger, along with small triangular "arrow points." In most of our excavations, another 10 centimeters or so will bring us down on top of the undisturbed "midden" or garbage deposits of the people who once inhabited this town.As the students become more confident with their newfound techniques and skills (and more familiar with the "routines"), we begin to move more quickly with our work.
After work, a few of us checked out the swallow population in the main hall of one of the barns on the property.
We have high hopes for Friday and Saturday as we proceed beneath the plowed areas into "undisturbed archaeology.
Join us again tomorrow (and then next week) to keep up with our discoveries!