While the day was not too hot and overcast, it was a bit wet and muggy after the rain last evening. The day began with bailing the water from our plastic.
Unfortunately, some pinhole leaks in the plastic covering some of our excavations left them too soaked to work on today. We carefully bailed water with buckets and sponges and let the units dry for today. While problematic for us, the frog below was clearly thrilled with the new "ponds" we created.
We worked on finishing excavations in several areas -- mostly excavating plowzone in some new excavation units that have revealed little to us yet. We cleaned up the section of palisade trench for photographs -- in the photo below, the fill in the trench shows very nicely.
We also began excavating the two-meter long section of the trench in one of the units -- unfortunately, the lower half of the fill in the trench was soaked with water apparently seeping along the length of the buried ditch.
The fill in the trench continues to yield a few sparse Mississippian period artifacts -- fragments of pottery, animal bone, and an occasional interesting artifact like the "nutting stone" shown below. The stone has a small hickory nut sized pit on each side -- generally, these are interpreted as tool for breaking open hickory nuts and/or walnuts.
We also completed excavations down to the bottom of the plowzone in two units where we were hoping to find a continuation of the palisade ditch. Instead of the straightforward trenchline we were hoping for, we seem to have discovered a section of trench or ditch turning at several right angles (outlined below in yellow). We're still cleaning and interpreting the top of this feature, so it will be another day or so before we have a better picture of this feature.
However, it seems at least possible that we have discovered one of the "bastions" or towers that are frequently found on town palisades of this era. The map shown below is from the Rutherford-Kizer Mounds near Hendersonville (about 17 miles west of our site). During the early 1990s, our excavations at the site included investigations of a long segment of palisade trench similar to the one at Castalian Springs. Along that segment, we excavated two of these bastions -- the arrow on the map points to one of these bastions. What we found today MIGHT be something similar to this feature at Rutherford-Kizer -- only time and a bit more excavation will tell.
Hopefully, the weather will cooperate over the next few days and we'll be able to continue investigations of these features. Your web reporter has an evening lecture to attend in Nashville on Tuesday night after our day in the field, so the web pages for Tuesday may not be posted until Wednesday evening!