Some more progress!

It was the warmest day yet on site, which meant we took more breaks and made sure everyone was drinking enough water. The first Stage 3 crew finished their units with Michael and came back to the main site, while another group went to Michael to start their Stage 3 units. The hotter and drier weather has helped the soil to dry out even more, so screening is getting easier, plus our crew is getting faster and better at digging the more they have practiced!

With so much of the crew split off to do their Stage 3 field test units, Dan, James and I got to jump in and do more digging than we normally get to do! We did some backfilling, and generally filled in on a screen or digging when an extra body would be useful.

We had a visit from Bob Pearce and his wife Janice today. Bob was a MA student at Trent in the 1970s, and after completing his PhD from McGill continued as a professional archaeologist at various positions until his retirement. He’s still busy conducting research, however, and it was nice to catch up with him.

At the main site, the major accomplishment today was cleaning the exposed drain surface (deftly and capably done by Caleb, Grant, Teika and Janet) and photographing it. We are still trying to work out how it was constructed, as we can’t see signs of a cut or a trench. Tomorrow we will likely take out a cross-section and see what it looks like in profile.

Mel and Jada planned and removed the feature in their unit, and work is continuing on the new units we started yesterday. We are hoping that we are closer to locating any possible structure remnants by shifting our efforts to the north east.

It’s hard to believe the field school is half over already…we have so much we still want to accomplish and it feels like we are running out of time!