Last Friday marked the halfway point of the field school. We have accomplished a lot in seven days of work, and it's a pleasure to watch the students continue to become more and more comfortable and competent with the strategies, methods, and techniques of basic archaeological excavation.
In the "upstairs" portion of the site, excavations in Units 4 and 6 continued into the deposits beneath Zone 2. In Unit 6, we dealt with a small feature (designated Feature 6) that appeared beneath Zone 2.
A cultural "feature" is basically an immovable artifact -- an "in place" deposit created by human activity. In this part of the world, cultural features include the remains of such things as hearths, storage pits, cooking pits, postholes, burials, etc. Because intact features contain a record of a discrete set of human activities that occurred over a relatively short span of time, they hold valuable clues about what people were actually doing at a site. We love features because they give us specific information that other kinds of deposits cannot.
In the "upstairs" portion of the site, excavations in Units 4 and 6 continued into the deposits beneath Zone 2. In Unit 6, we dealt with a small feature (designated Feature 6) that appeared beneath Zone 2.
A cultural "feature" is basically an immovable artifact -- an "in place" deposit created by human activity. In this part of the world, cultural features include the remains of such things as hearths, storage pits, cooking pits, postholes, burials, etc. Because intact features contain a record of a discrete set of human activities that occurred over a relatively short span of time, they hold valuable clues about what people were actually doing at a site. We love features because they give us specific information that other kinds of deposits cannot.
Feature 6 in plan view prior to excavation, with lines scribed for mapping. The inner zone of the feature consisted of a circular/elliptical stain that contained a moderate density of charcoal. The outer zone was probably a "bleed" area created by natural processes (worms, insects, and roots) mixing parts of the feature with the surrounding sediment. The nails and string mark the line along which the feature will be excavated and profiled.
As you can see from the photo above, Feature 6 was a rather unspectacular stained area that contained a moderate amount of charcoal. We used standard feature excavating techniques to document and remove the feature: (1) mapped and described it in plan view; (2) bisected it to expose a profile, screening the sediment through 1/4" mesh; (3) documented the profile; (4) removed the remaining portion of the feature as a flotation sample. There wasn't much cultural material in the feature, but there were lots of large chunks of charcoal. In profile the feature appeared to be a shallow basin with a fairly regular shape, and there was no evidence that it was a root stain or rodent burrow.
Students excavating and documenting Feature 6.
The excavation to expose Feature 6 in profile went down to about 90 cmbd (centimeters below datum), so that seemed like a good target for the bottom of level 7 in Units 4 and 6. By the end of the day, Unit 6 was well on the way to being there, with no sign of cultural features. We're using a shovel-scraping methodology that, hopefully, strikes a good balance between speed and control. I want to go slow enough to recognize cultural features if they're present, but fast enough to end up with some good data on what we're dealing with as far as the horizontal and vertical distribution of prehistoric materials.
Work in progress in the block.
Meanwhile, Unit 5 -- the third 2m x 2m unit in the "upstairs" block -- finally got to the base of Zone 2. If there was any remaining doubt that Zone 2 was plowed, those doubts were removed by a large stone exposed at the interface of Zones 2 and 3 in Unit 5. This rock -- the biggest one I've seen at the site so far -- was undoubtedly brought to the site by prehistoric peoples. While the rock is resting securely in situ in Zone 3 sediments, its top has been sheared off and scraped multiple times by a plow (individual plow scars are visible). If there was ever "smoking gun" evidence of plowing, this is it.
Large rock at the interface of Zones 2 and 3 in Unit 5. The rock is in situ, and the top has been scraped by plowing.
Meanwhile, in the "downstairs" portion of the site, work resumed on the excavation of Unit 9 (the 1m x 3m unit placed to extend the profile wall. As excavations near the top of the (supposed) Middle/Late Archaic zone, Jim Legg dazzled the students with yet another paisley shirt. Work also continued in Unit 7, a 1m x 2m unit being excavated to explore what lies beneath the exposed profile.
Work in progress in Unit 9 (left) and Unit 7 (lower right).
The last level of Unit 7 contained very little material. It did reveal, however, that the lamellae (the dark bands of sediment caused by the downward migration and accumulation of clay particles) appear to end rather suddenly. The base sediment remains coarse sand. It's possible that the abrupt ending of the lamellae is telling us something about the level of the water table: saturated sediment would presumably not facilitate the downward migration of clay particles. This will be something we can investigate with sediment analysis once we've got a nice profile exposed that we can sample. In the meantime, I've got my fingers crossed that we don't get a significant rainfall that presses the pause button on Unit 7.
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