Fragmented Friday

Yesterday the main excavations continued at the Stage 3 site. This is where the students get to see a different kind of archaeology, where the goal is to determine the extent and character of a previously identified site.

Our Stage 3 headquarters today, a pile of equipment, binders and reference material

In a Stage 3, we are excavating 1m x 1m units 5cm into subsoil, and collecting any artifacts we find. If we happen to encounter a feature (usually some evidence of human activity like a circular soil stain, rocks arranged in a linear fashion suggesting architecture, etc.) the excavation stops and it gets recorded for a future Stage 4 excavation. I enjoy Stage 3s because they are so standard and formulaic, but I can see at the start how the students were wondering what is the point and if their walls really needed to be vertical and straight.

Esther and Bradley work on a Stage 3 unit.

The thing I don’t like about Stage 3s is that you really have no idea about what is going on at a site at finer levels of interpretation. We are essentially punching standard size holes in a grid over the site extent, and collecting any artifacts. Because we are digging in arbitrary layers, we don’t get the same vertical control of artifact positioning as we would in a context-based excavation, but again, the goal of this type of excavation is to sample the site in a standardized collection method.

Our line of Stage 3 units (mostly) along the baseline we set, and offset depending on if there was a tree or other reason to shift the distribution

It is definitely a different kind of archaeology than our Structure 1 excavations, and it is a good experience for our students, especially if they are thinking about joining a consulting archaeology firm for the summer after they finish the field school.


Today we are distributed across campus, some people are working on the Stage 3 site with James, August and Sophie are finishing up their excavations at Structure 1, and I am helming the lab crew doing primary processing of the artifact backlogs, and then we will strike a backfill crew of volunteers to get Structure 1 put back to bed for now.

It was so busy I didn’t have time to take any pictures, but we managed to catch up so that everything recovered has now been washed, the previously washed material has been bagged and counted is now ready for secondary analysis, and so we will be ready in the event of more rain.

Four days left after today!


Finally, here are the answers to the I-Spy from the other day:

Can you spot: 1. The lid to a cast iron stove; 2. a horse curry comb; 3. a carbon battery rod; 4. a stoneware ink bottle; 5. a manganese tint bottle finish; 6. a bow from a pair of scissors; 7. a teaspoon; 8. a clay marble; 9. a doll’s teacup; 10. a bone-handled fork

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