It’s hard to believe but we are closing in towards the end of the field school. At this point, we are aiming to have the main excavation work done by the end of the week. Next week is any late stage minor excavation, final recording, and lab work before we close out this season.
By this point the crew knows generally what they are doing and are working more and more autonomously (James and I still providing supervision, but more as a resource to consult as opposed to us directly instructing). As James has told them several times, we can teach someone how to dig in ten minutes, but it is practicing the observational and physical skills where our students are really learning the practice of archaeological excavation.
We had a visit after lunch by Esther, who is an alumna of our field school at this very site in 2024! She is now in the Anthropology Graduate Program as a MA student, and has a workstudy position this summer in the Anthropology Department. One of her tasks today was to interview us for some upcoming social media content!
It’s the Foxes turn to start the mapping exercise, so they began the morning with familiarizing themselves with the instruments and how to level them on the tripods. I think the students always feel a little daunted by this, but like with most things, practice makes perfect!
The Snakes spent the day trying to sink their unit to uncover where we think the wall must be located based on the other foundation walls we can see. They are still finding a fair number of artifacts. Some that I can recall from today are parts of canning jars, a Pepsi-Cola bottle, a small jingle bell, a gold plated cap to a Waterman branded pen, and a round locket pendant. I am really looking forward to seeing everything washed up when we are next in the lab so we can get more details.
Half of the Ladybugs began in the morning to lay out a new excavation unit over top an intriguing depression next to the foundation walls. By the end of today they had started the plan drawing. Tomorrow once they take elevations and get a photograph, they are ready to start excavating. It will be interesting to see what is revealed!
The other Ladybugs worked on setting in a sondage unit in their operation area. The goal of this is to see if there are artifacts continuing in the context underneath, or if we have reached natural soil and thus are below the level of the habitation.
The Bears have two tasks to tackle today in their very complicated unit. One is to define the exterior walls of the structure and see if we can determine how deep they go and how they were constructed. The second is to take out a deposit in our suspected fire installation. Our current working hypothesis is that at some point an exterior wall of the structure was removed, and a new fireplace/chimney of some sort was put in on a poured concrete footing. Because we are excavating in a context-based approach, we need to identify the individual events captured in the archaeological record and take them out in reverse order from youngest to oldest.
Thursday looks like it will be another beautiful day, and we are looking forward to seeing what new things we learn from the site!
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