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A toasty Tuesday, and an impromptu artifact of the day.

It seems the long weekend has brought all summer in a day today. We’ve had fairly cool temperatures up to this point so it was a bit of a tiring day in the heat and humidity. One bonus was the blackflies weren’t out, but the Eastern Cottonwoods are doing their thing and the air is full of little bits of white fluff blowing around and sticking to sweat and being inhaled inadvertently. Our crew bravely toiled on despite the conditions. We have some dappled shade, and there was an intermittent breeze, and lots of beautiful birdsong so we made the best of it.

The Ladybugs spent the day in the Archaeology Centre mastering mapping, but they will be on site tomorrow.

The Snakes, Bears and Foxes had a busy day. Their digging skills have all improved so much since their first day on site, and some serious earth was moved today. Other tasks that seemed really daunting at first like like taking levels and drawing plans are going much more smoothly with each time they practice. The rest of the field school is now when the real work begins.

I am quite charmed by this old apple tree on the site, near the foundation. It still keeps blooming every year, despite half the tree being dead. It has probably been around since the house we are excavating was still standing.
The Foxes working hard on removing the fill inside the wall they have discovered. Note the large cast iron pipe by Dee, and the blanket in the upper right of the excavation unit, waiting to be freed (see below). Mischa is sitting where we think there might have been a door. Danielle is holding a red bin in the background, which by the end of the day was almost entirely full of burned nails and other artifacts from this fill deposit.
The Bears have finished removing the upper layer from their extension, and are planning the new context that has been revealed. Tomorrow they are going to document what we think is perhaps a fireplace, and then they will deconstruct it with the ultimate goal of figuring out the construction phasing of this structure and how it relates to the other walls, cuts, and postholes we can see.
The Snakes are down deeper in their new excavation extension placed to track the concrete footing and found…it ends? Direct quote from James when he heard: “Whaat?!!”
So it was back to excavating. Jocelyn, Sarah, and Jay are continuing to look for any signs of a wall heading south.
Lucas and Konrad working on taking out the fill inside the walls. Note the blanket behind Konrad’s left shoulder, and the large cast iron pipe behind Lucas.

I think the artifact of the day has to be the blue blanket, which was finally released from the soil’s embrace towards the end of the day. This blanket originally appeared on the first day of excavation, and was thought to be a ground hornets nest of some kind as only a tiny bit of it was visible as the Foxes began their unit, wedged under a large chunk of crumpled metal.

As the excavation continued, more and more of the blanket was revealed! It’s looking a bit ratty and tatty, and has faded from its original bright blue colour, but the blanket abides. Textiles are a pretty rare recovery on sites in this region, but the fact that 1. it isn’t all that old (my guess is 1950s-1960s) and 2. it is predominantly synthetic fibres (I am guessing acrylic as it is crunchy) meant it preserved in the depositional environment. It seems to just have a basic turned and stitched hem at the ends, and the sides are just the selvedge from when it was on the machine loom. It does not have satin binding like other thermal blankets I am familiar with.

Lucas demonstrating the blanket is now free!

It’s looking like some thunderstorms will be passing through tonight, bringing welcome cool air, so the rest of the week is looking great for excavation and mapping exercises. See you tomorrow!

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