We had some rain this morning, so we decided to split the team into two groups, one beginning with James learning about the applications of GIS and archaeology, and how all the archaeological information we have collected including maps, plans, artifact counts and spatial location are used in interpreting a site. The other group was with me, and we tackled some finds processing including provisionally tagging and counting washed material and washing some of the artifacts we have collected this season.
At break we swapped groups and that took us until lunch time.
After lunch, the sun had come out so we split the party again, with some going to the Indigenous site, and the rest with me to the historical site.
Work continued on open units this afternoon. Susannah, Justyna and Tim finished the unit they have been working on, and Adam and Kelsey jumped back into their unit (they had been at the other site). There is a dark middeny stain quite visible in the unit, where most of the artifacts are concentrated. This continues into the unit to the south which sadly will remain unexcavated this season!
Alyssa worked on cleaning back her unit and drawing a plan and profile. Tomorrow she will be able to section the feature in the unit and draw the profile for that.
Sebastian profiled the wall of the drain in his unit, and tried to excavate deeper to see the bottom of the drain but alas the drain just keeps filling everything with water!
Abigail and Melissa worked hard on getting their unit cleaned up and down to the equivalent level of Sebastian. Abigail found water right at the end of day so that means that unit is done too.
We were hemming and hawing about opening that new 2×2 since we had lost half a day of excavation time, but we decided to go for it. It will be all hands on deck tomorrow to get that unit exposed!
Tomorrow will be a busy day, as it is our last full day of excavation. Michael and his crew need to place a couple more test units tomorrow at the Indigenous site which need to be finished and backfilled by end of day. We also have some loose ends to wrap up before we are finished (most notably this new 2×2!), but I am pretty confident the crew can apply the skills they have learned and practiced over the past four weeks to get it done.
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