Features!

At the start of the day some of the units were already down to the natural soil layer, while others still had to keep digging to get down to theirs due to there being more sediment from flooding over the years. Those of us that were already down to the natural soil began our day in the field by defining our features and mapping them to scale on graph paper. After we finished that we got to start carefully digging up our features and bagging up the dirt for flotation to recover small things like organic material.

Below: Steve Scheflow digging up a post mold and bagging the dirt

Since we were digging much smaller areas and had to be careful not to damage artifacts and to keep the integrity of the shape of the feature we ditched our trowels and started using spoons and dental tools.

Below: Laura Volz works on exposing a pottery sherd with a dental pic

Some of our features had nothing in them, some had a few artifacts, while others (like the above photo) had an abundance of artifacts, including shell (marine & freshwater), pottery sherds, chert, bone and a bone bead. For the features that contain many artifacts we had to dig around them and leave them where were naturally deposited (in situ) in order to see the way they are arranged to help us possibly figure out why they are positioned the way they are. Then once the exposed artifacts have been photographed in situ they can be collected.

Below: Two post molds and a feature with half of the artifacts in situ

As we continue to excavate our units these last two day we hope to find more exciting things in our features that can help give us a better look at the people that once lived on this land we've been digging in.