lots of overdue updates

the last 2 weeks have been very busy with work and excavating so the blog took a back seat for a bit. This means that I have a lot of updates.
firstly I contacted a man names James Murphy who is a Professor at OSU. He sent me a few links and articles that will really help with my research as well as identifing the striped piece of chert from a few posts back. The piece is informally known as "Deep Run Banded Chert". James said that the occurance was rare in the area and sent me pages of a CRM report that is the only source he has on it. I'm really excited about this piece now and hopefully I can contact some more people from the area to see about its occurance.

On a day that I happened to be working Mom and my Uncle Mike and his girlfriend Kathy went out to the site. They made great progress on the unit which made it much easier for Mom and I to finish it. I am so grateful for both Mike and Kathy, thanks for coming out guys!

This is a really cool crystal that Mike found, It has bits of red on it, once I get it back to Wooster and washed I'll look at it much closer.

On July 4th Mom and I decided to celebrate freedom by going out to the site. We knocked out the rest of the context layer and I did a lot of surface collection where I found big pieces of chert laying right on the surface. It was a pretty normal day except that our turkey friends returned , and this time they were sneaking up on us. There were two grown turkeys, probably a male and a female, rooting around for food. They didn't gobble just walked realyl close to us. Every time we tried to get a clear picture it was hard so only a blurry one is provided.

Today Mom and I went out to basically clean up the unit. We cut roots and made sure that the walls were level and the clay layer was exposed. I found a few pieces of chert and rocks but not a huge amount. I predict that we will close this unit in probably two more excavation days. Mom may even go in with Dad one day that I am working and close it.

The circles in the picture are not post holes they are imprints frm my bucket.

Next time we go out to the site I plan on taking soil samples, measuring the unit distance from the earthworks so that I can map it more easily. I also need to make another copy of the map or get one from OHS so that I dont mess up the one that I have.

Alright huge update but thanks for reading!!