Day 12 - "Snakes... Why Did it Have to be Snakes?"

What would an archaeology blog be without at least one Indiana Jones reference? Albeit an obscure one... The title for today's entry was inspired by our encounter with this impressive-sized black racer snake below:

Is it turning its nose up at us?

The snake eyed us suspiciously for a bit, and after it decided we were (mostly) harmless, lived up to its name and made a dash for the tree line.

The snake was not the only animal encounter today of note. The crew was also visited by some rather bold butterflies, who insisted on landing on us for long periods of time, presumably to consume salt off of our sweaty clothes.

This butterfly sat on Dr. Jeb Card for quite a long time.

Animal encounters aside, today was an unusual field day. The rumbling of thunder early in the morning set us packing out of the field before 11am, only to have us return again after 2pm to work until well after 4pm. Despite this peculiar schedule, and the by-now-to-be-expected heat and humidity, excavation still progressed nicely.

Students, especially those in the southern units, have begun encountering increasingly larger and more impressive artifacts - particularly lithic flakes. Some of the nicer samples from today can be seen below:



We also found our first piece of unaltered bone of the season today (we found pieces of calcined bone late last week). It looks to be a shaft fragment of a long bone of a cow or deer, thought cow is probably the likely candidate as we are excavating near a pasture.

We will continue to post more interesting finds as they are unearthed.

Day 9- Another Wet Day

Mother Nature again determined the course of fieldwork for the day. After attempting to reach the site in the rain, it was decided to begin water screening at a residence about one mile away from the site. In the field, all sediments removed from the excavation units are sifted through ¼ inch mesh screen. All of the dirt that falls through the screens is then collected, bagged, and labeled with excavation unit information for water screening. The falling rain may not help very much during excavation, but during water screening, it is a welcomed aide.

Water screening recovers much smaller artifacts than dry screening alone. As the name implies, water screening uses water to help push sediments through 1/16 inch window screen. Small lithic and ceramic artifacts that may have passed through the ¼ inch mesh screen during dry screening are often able to be recovered during water screening. Water screening also allows for the recovery of plant remains, such as seeds and shells, which can be studied by ethnoarchaeobotanists to shed light on the diets of the inhabitants of the site.

After morning break, the skies began to clear so the crew walked to the site rather than risk getting the van stuck in the mud. Excavations continued on into the afternoon, with many students able to close out another level.

Day 9 - Wet Day, Wet Screening

Here are a few images for Day 9, to compliment Jenna's post above.

Water-screening

The crew, working during a rare moment of dryness.

Everyone in the crew will keep their collective fingers crossed that things start to dry out soon. Despite the rain, progress is still being made.

An interesting note: Jessica, one of the students on the dig, discovered that one of the larger lithic pieces so far recovered from this season may in fact be a broken prismatic blade - a type common to this area during the Woodland Period. Here is an image of the blade in question:

Day 8 - Blame it on the Rain

by B. Smith

Unfortunately, field work was somewhat thwarted due to on-again-off-again (but mostly on-again) heavy downpours. The rest of the week does not look too promising either, with a 40% chance of rain up through Friday. Today, however, was especially rough - there were even some flash flood warnings for nearby towns. The executive decision was made to park our van at the top of the hill away from the site, so that we would have high enough ground to drive out of if the ground got too saturated. We wanted to avoid getting quagmired at all costs. The weather seemed to enjoy tormenting us: at least twice it would rain heavily, only to subside right about the time we managed to pack up all of our stuff into the van.

The van on the hill, during a rare dry moment.

Despite the rain, we were still able to accomplish some things in the field. Primarily, all students were able to check the soil coloration of the bottom of their unit via the Munsell color chart. Some were even able to make considerable headway into their next excavation level.

Using the Munsell color chart.

We ultimately had to leave early, due to concerns over wet equipment and soaked units, but students were able to make up for the lost time with more time spent in the lab with Dr. Jeb Card. Even with today's setback, progress in the field is still coming along very nicely.