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Broad River Archaeological Field School: Day 9 (3/17/2017)

3/20/2017

8 Comments

 
After a week off for spring break, the field school returned to the Broad River to continue excavations at 38FA608. We're in the thick of things now. Unfortunately, the student who brings a coffee maker was absent.

It's slow going in the excavation block. During our previous day in the field, we began getting into what appeared to be a Late Archaic / Early Woodland deposit in Units 4 and 6. That day ended with numerous artifacts marked in place on the floors of those units. The crews in those units spent most of the latest field day dealing with those artifacts, plotting and collecting each one. ​
Picture
Work in progress in the "upstairs" excavation block.
Unit 6 (upper left in the photo above) produced the bases of two heavily reworked Mack points in context, along with numerous pieces of chipped stone debris and fire-cracked rock. We've seen nothing yet in those units that suggests a discrete feature. Unit 4 has produced some ceramic debris in the "Mack" deposit, but I have yet to see any large pieces or pieces with decoration (that doesn't mean we won't found them or even that we haven't already -- the students are plotting hundreds of artifacts and I'm not looking at each one as it comes out of the ground).
Picture
The two heavily reworked Mack points from Unit 6 (left) compared to two less reworked Mack points from Aiken County (right). The presence of points that have been worked down to almost nothing but the haft region immediately suggests that one of the things people were doing at this site was retooling -- discarding worn tools as they refurbished their equipment.
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A sample of "in progress" paperwork: this map of Level 8 of Unit 6 shows the XY locations of the artifacts that the students are plotting (the depths are recorded elsewhere). You can see the locations of plots 774 (upper left) and 817 (lower right), the two projectile points shown in the photo above.
Progress in Unit 5 was slowed by the presence of two small features (Features 7 and 8). Feature 7 was a small deposit of dark, charcoal flecked sediment that appears similar to Feature 6 that we encountered in Unit 6. Only a portion of Feature 7 was visible in the floor of Unit 5, with the remainder extending into the unexcavated portion of Unit 3.  We documented and removed the portion in Unit 5, and we will catch the profile of the feature in the wall of the unit.

Feature 8 was a circular area of light sediment. We documented it in plan and then bisected it. It appears to be a circular pit with relatively straight sides that extend at least 15 cm from the depth at which the feature was defined. Based on the light fill of the feature, its shape in plan and profile, and the fact that it appeared within Zone 2 (the buried plowzone), the feature is almost certainly a historic period post or auger hole of some kind. We'll need to scoop out the remaining fill to keep any intrusive artifacts from plowzone from contaminating the prehistoric deposits.
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Work resumed on the "downstairs" portion of the site with the return of Jim Legg. Jim and a student continued excavating Unit 9 to produce a straight profile wall. There were no diagnostic artifacts and no sign of any features associated with the presumed Middle/Late Archaic deposit, which was a bummer.  There's still a chance we'll find something in what's left of Unit 9 that can give us a firm handle on time/culture deep in the profile, but it's not looking good at this point. Jim wore black instead of paisley, and I can't completely let go of the idea that his wardrobe choice might have hurt our efforts. (Update [3/21/2017]: Legg has promised to return to paisley when we go in the field this Friday.)
Picture
Unit 9, almost to the base of the profile wall.
8 Comments
Jim
3/20/2017 12:35:04 pm

I am probably out to lunch with this, but it crossed my mind with feature 6 being smallish, that it may have been a post with a subsequent fire. I don't suppose 6,7 and 8 are on a straight line and somewhat evenly spaced ?

Reply
Andy White
3/21/2017 06:57:57 am

Several signs point to F.8 being much later in time than 6 and 7. F.8 appears to have penetrated through the buried plowzone, suggesting that it post-dates that plowzone, which has to be from the historic period. F.6 and F.7, in contrast, appear to have been truncated (had their upper portions removed) by the buried plowzone, indicating that they pre-date that plowzone. My best guess is that F.6 and F.7 are small "smudge pit" features associated with the Mississippian occupation that deposited the debris that was later churned up by plowing.

Reply
Bob Jase
3/21/2017 09:43:28 am

Stupid question - do we know if the reworked small points were used for smaller game? I mean it seems logical but is there solid evidence like dna of prey found on them?

Reply
Andy White
3/21/2017 09:50:29 am

In this case, what we're seeing is a reduction in the size of the blade as it goes through repeated cycles of use and re-sharpening. Each time you sharpen a chipped stone blade you remove material to create a fresh edge -- the blade is reduced in size over time until it is unusable.

Stone "points" like these were used for lots of different activities. They were certainly hafted onto wooden or bone shafts or handles, but where used as saws, knives, and scrapers in addition to serving as the business ends of projectile weapons.

It does make sense (for ballistic reasons) that there's a correlation between projectile weight and prey size, but for stone-tipped projectiles (arrows and atlatl darts) the most important contributor to weight is actually the shaft rather than the point. The width of the hafting area of the point is probably telling us something about the width of the shaft. The length of the stone projectile, however, in this case is a function of where these tools are in the use-lives.

Reply
Bob Jase
3/21/2017 11:30:46 am

thanks

E.P. Grondine
3/23/2017 11:34:51 am

Damn, Andy.

Those ceramics should be telling you exactly where you are in time,
but you are not listening to them.

Reply
Andy White
3/23/2017 11:38:38 am

Once again, you misunderstand.

Reply
E.P. Grondine
3/23/2017 07:41:42 pm






Hi Andy -
Misunderstand? Me?
Well, I do that a lot now a days.
But to tell the truth, I can not even understand what attracted you to his particular site.
There are a lot of sites around.
Was there a question this particular site could answer?
It does not appear to me to be a question of a rescue dig.
Was it just a good place to train students?
Well, someone was willing to pay for it,
and I assume for good reasons.
In any case, good luck with it

Reply



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