Another beautiful day for archaeology at Castalian Springs in June -- bright sunny day, but not too humid and a lovely breeze. When we arrive a bit after 7:00 this morning, a majestic red-tailed hawk was perched atop one of the haybales across the field from our excavations. He/she declined to wait for me to get a closer-up photo -- so just take my word that the speck below is a hawk!
Fortunately or not, we don't have a lot of photos for today -- your field correspondent was tied up actually having to do physical labor today. While I prefer that the students get the opportunity to experience the hard labor of fieldwork, sometimes I have to step in and try to figure out what we're looking at before I can tell them how to proceed. Today was one of those days.
In our westernmost units, we began excavations into that complex set of features described yesterday. While we didn't have an answer at the end of the day on exactly WHAT we're finding -- we have moved into areas that are largely undisturbed by the plow and have some spectacular information for the archaeologist. We are now discovering large fragments of broken pottery discarded almost 1000 years ago by native peoples. The photograph below shows on of these pieces in situ -- or, "as we found it in the ground.
As the day proceeded, we excavated several hundreds of fragments of pottery, stone tools, and animal remains -- two beautiful fragments of a jar and plate are shown below.
Elsewhere on the site, our other four student teams opened new excavation areas today -- and made some great progress. Sometime tomorrow, I expect all of them will be discovering some additional new and exciting information about this ancient native town.
Our dedicated and exceptionally hard-working student teams have moved a giant amount of dirt in the past week. Our progress in just one week has been stellar -- and entirely due to their excitement, interest, and true dedication to the goals of our shared project. I couldn't ask for a better bunch of team members. As the photo below indicates, our screened dirt has become a noticeable feature on the landscape in its own right.
We also had some able assistance from Dr. Hugh Berryman -- forensic anthropologist at MTSU -- who volunteered this afternoon.
And, we want to acknowledge the able-bodied help from a recent graduate of our program at MTSU -- Mike Warren. An "alum" of the Castalian Springs project from last year, Mike has been out several days to lend his labor to the project in general and to share his experiences with the new students on this long term project.
