Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Day three of excavations

Day three of excavations and the heat and the dirt keep on coming!
Today Micah came out to help and it made things a lot easier. We started where we left off yesterday by extending the shovel test counterclockwise from the NW corner to the SE. The buckets of dirt were then sifted by yours truly, Micah and Mom.  This was dirty work and I got covered in it.
We found some more chert, what appears to be a projectile point tip, another piece of charcoal and a bullet casing. Dad looked at the bullet and says it is a 17 caliber, which would put it maybe 30-40 years old. There is a mark on the bullet but we have not identified it as of yet. It was kind of disheartening to find the bullet amongst artifacts which seem to be from Native Americans. Though we also found pieces of a beer can that were closer to the surface. It is evident that people have been out to the area and perhaps people have gone shooting? The charcoal that I have found I will hopefully carbon date and perhaps it will help with dates of the artifacts. Maybe someone shot into the ground? I kind of hope so.
Mom and I are taking a day off tomorrow and it is a well needed rest day, I plan on putting together paper work and washing off artifacts a bit.
Look at the trench

Sifting dirt oops sorry, sediment

view from above

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