In the week before SEAC, I had the students in my South Carolina Archaeology class sorting sherds in my lab. As the first part of a group/individual ceramic project, they were getting some experience identifying vessel portion, kind of temper, surface treatment, and decoration in sherds from a surface collection from Allendale County, South Carolina (the Larry Strong collection -- the same one I used to get some data for this Kirk paper). For the second part of the project, I'm going to supply them with the combined data and ask them to: (A) match the groups to named ceramic wares using information on excellent sites such as this one; (B) create a graphic depiction of change through time in temper, surface treatment, and the frequency of decoration; and (C) address in writing several questions linking the pottery to patterns of social/technological change. 

I'm posting some quick images of most of the rim sherds (and some decorated non-rims) here so they will be able to look at them without coming back to the lab repeatedly while they're working on their projects. I know that some of you will know what these types are -- please don't deprive my students of the joy of discovery!

​Also - hi students!

On of the main questions in play over the last couple of days in the field concerns the nature of Zone 2, the dark zone of sediment present immediately beneath the plowzone. I vacillated on whether it was a second, buried plowzone or an intact, prehistoric cultural deposit (i.e., a thin midden). Because I wasn't sure either way, I erred on the side of excavating it as though it was an unplowed deposit, having the students shovel skim and piece-plot.

This Friday, we finally got to the bottom of Zone 2 in two of the block units (Units 4 and 6). Lo and behold . . . plow scars. So it looks like Zone 2 has been plowed after all. 

Calling Zone 2 a "plowzone" doesn't end my questions about it. For one, there are subtle lenses within the zone (visible in profile) that seem inconsistent with a plowzone and need to be explained.  For two, the variable nature of the boundary between Zones 2 and 3 suggests that, if Zone 2 was originally accumulated as a surface midden, there is the distinct potential that unplowed pockets of the midden remain intact. For three, we need to explain the origin of all the lighter sediment that was somehow deposited on top of Zone 2, burying it and shifting the modern plowzone upward. While I'm not sure we'll be able to answer those questions this field season, I am happy that we've recovered what appears to be a nice little assemblage of Mississippian-age ceramic and lithic debris. 

We're removing the last remnants of Zone 2 with a shallow level (Level 6, about 5 cm in depth) intended to get rid of the plowscars and level the units off at an even 75 cm below datum. As of the end of the day on Friday, Level 6 was in progress in Units 4 and 6. Unit 5 was finishing up the last of their Zone 2 level (Level 4 in that unit).

With work just beginning below Zone 2, it already looks different. In Unit 6, the top of Zone 3 has revealed a couple of large (golf ball-sized) pieces of fire-cracked rock and a charcoal-rich stain that could be the top of a cultural feature. We'll learn more about Zone 3 during our next day in the field.

Meanwhile, in the "downstairs" portion of the site, we finally opened Unit 7 (Jim Legg could not join us, so work on Unit 9 was paused). Unit 7 is a 1m x 2m unit placed to investigate what, if anything, is beneath the deposits exposed in the machine cut.  While the short answer, so far, is "not much," the deep sediments are not sterile: there was at least one piece of fire-cracked rock in the second level of Unit 7. I'm not anticipating we'll run into a heavy prehistoric deposit, but at this point we don't have any data about what's down there other than a single exploration I did with a 3" bucket auger.  A few more levels in Unit 7 have the potential to tell us quite a bit, as even a relatively sparse occupation will probably be detectable in levels from a 1m x 2m unit.

We had another sunny Friday with highs in the mid-50's. I saw a bee over the weekend, so it looks like the worst of another brutal South Carolina winter is behind us.

As I wrote last week, my hope for this Friday was that we would end the day being able to say with some confidence whether Zone 2 (the dark zone beneath the plowzone) is a buried plowzone or an intact cultural deposit. Unfortunately, I still don't have definitive evidence either way.  Based on the day's work, however, I'm now leaning more toward the idea that we are, in fact, dealing with an unplowed prehistoric deposit.

If Zone 2 is a buried plowzone, we'll expect to see some evidence of plowing (e.g., plow scars or plow-truncated features) at the interface between the base of the zone and the underlying sediments. We're not to that interface in any of the block units yet, however.

Because I don't know what Zone 2 is, I had the students excavate it using a shovel-skim/piece-plot methodology. Shovel-skimming involves using shovels to carefully remove thin (e.g., 1/4" to 1/2") slices of sediment. This technique allows you to leave larger artifacts in place as you find them and keep an eye out for changes in sediment color and texture that could be associated with cultural features such as hearths, pits, or postholes. I had the students leave artifacts in place as they encountered them, marking them with a piece of orange flagging tape stuck in the ground with a nail. When the floor became too cluttered with artifacts, artifacts were piece-plotted (mapped individually) and removed. All the sediment that was removed with shovels was passed through 1/4" screen to catch smaller artifacts that weren't detected during the shoveling.​

If Zone 2 turns out to be a buried plowzone, our careful excavation of it will have been largely an educational exercise (shovel skimming and piece-plotting are techniques that the students need to learn regardless, so that's fine). If it turns out to be an intact Mississippian midden deposit, however, I'll be happy that we excavated through it in a way that may help us learn something about its formation. The deposit has produced several rim sherds and at least one fragment of a pipe bowl. So far, there has been no sign of features originating within the deposit.

One of the pieces of information that has me thinking that Zone 2 may be a prehistoric midden is the view now available in the wall of Unit 9.  Last week, I pointed at a small section of the base of Zone 2 and noted that it was more abrupt than one would expect in a naturally-formed sediment zone. On Friday, however, I took another look at the Unit 9 wall that Jim Legg is working on and it appears that that abrupt "straight" segment is more the exception than the rule. There also appear to be thin horizontal lenses of sediment within Zone 2, the presence of which seems inconsistent with a plowed deposit.

As shown in the photo, the excavation of Unit 9 is now down into the portion of the profile where lamellae become visible. These lamellae -- thin layers of clay-enriched sediment -- become thicker and more pronounced with depth in the profile.  They are formed by the movement and accumulation of clay particles (here is an online article to get you started if you want to learn more about lamellae). Jim's excavation has yet to produce any diagnostic lithic artifacts (he's below the depth at which we're still expecting to find pottery) or evidence of intact features. He'll be down to the depth of what I think is a Middle/Late Archaic zone in a few more levels.