When we uncovered our excavations this morning, we discovered a couple of guests -- a field mouse (who escaped into his burrow in the field before I could snap a photo) and a shrew (trapped in one of the deeper excavations). Unlike our friend from June 9, this one was captured in a bucket and released in the field.

In our northeastern units, we continued investigations of the possible palisade trench and house patterns today. Our interpretations have changed a bit as we investigated these areas further. Yesterday, one of our excavations looked like this:

Today, further investigations yielded a more refined picture. The features outlined in black are possible postholes that don't yet seem to fit into a pattern. Those outlined in white appear to be a series of posts for a house wall that turns to the east. Those outlined in blue are a series of possible postholes for a wall probably associated with a second house. The trench outlined in yellow is our possible palisade trench.

Directly to the east, our further investigations revealed some additional features and refined our understanding of some from yesterday. Yesterday, our interpretation looked like this:

Today, we examined these further. The stain outlined in yellow turned out to be a shallow irregular shaped pit -- not much we could tell from it. The area outlined in blue remains a possible hearth -- we'll excavate it on Friday and see how that turns out. The smaller circles outlined in white appear to be a line of wall posts that match up with the other wall shown in the photos above.

As always, investigating these features is slow and painstaking work -- we stop to make records, drawings, and photographs at each step in the process. Below, Bekah, Jesse, and Meagan are mapping a recently excavated feature in their excavation unit.

In order to examine the possible palisade trench, we had to open another unit to the south to see how far the trench extended. Below, Richard and Brandy are doing hard labor in the afternoon heat to see if the trench continues.

While their crewmate Natalie makes the "wheelbarrow run" up the rapidly growing backdirt pile...

During the day, I excavated a 50-cm long section of the palisade trench to see what it looked like. It is an exceptionally well-defined and deep trench that certainly appears to be something more than a wall-trench for a house. By the end of the day, Richard, Brandy and Natalie had already revealed the top of the trench continuing another two meters to the south. On Friday, we'll continue investigations on this feature.

Elsewhere on the site, we continued investigating the large pit feature in our western units. With some massive efforts by the students and a volunteer (Robin, Lacey, Katie, Erica, Ryan, Alex and Georgia) we managed to get two new excavation units down to reveal the top of this feature. It now appears to be a large probably circular pit -- in the photo below, the yellow line shows our current "outline" of that feature. In the exploratory excavation -- note that we've cleaned it up and the red-orange burned soil at the base extends across the entire bottom of that exploration.

From a different angle, the yellow shows the outline of the large circular pit -- the blue shows another pit feature showing up at the lower right. Figuring this one out -- and excavating it -- will take another several days.

More news on Friday.