Moving Day

On probably the hottest excavation day yet, Mom and I went out to the site. Tuesday was designated as the last day at the first unit. We had to bail out the unit a bunch because of the heavy rains of the day before. We found a frog and two mice in the unit. The mice had started to make a nest.

We measured the distance between the unit and the earthworks, and then paced from the unit to the cliff. These measurements, along with the GPS coordinates will help to map the unit later.

I made sure that the clay layer was even and that no other artifacts were present at the surface. We probed into the clay to see how deep the layer went and could not find the bottom of the layer after about a foot. We decided that the clay was the sterile layer, meaning that no artifacts would be found and we could close the unit. We took photos of the unit walls and made notes about it before closing.

It is hard to tell very well from the picture but the top soil grades into a clay that has random gray clay nodules through out. The gray clay nodules stopped at the top of the pure yellow clay layer. This wall is the North wall which was probably the cleanest wall because there were the least amount of roots.

We took a little break after all of our measuring and walked over to a spot east of the first unit where we had flagged before. This spot is higher up than the first unit and showed probes containing both yellow and red clay, which is why they were flagged. I decided to probe again to see if this would be a good place to have the next unit and hit a large rock right on the surface. It turned out to be a huge piece of chert, most likely Flint Ridge due to the coloring.

I looked around the flagged area and found a lot more pieces of chert lying on the surface so I decided this spot would be an excellent place for the second unit. We ended up moving all of our equipment to this second site and started to refill in the first unit.

As the time gets closer to the start of Fall semester I need to work faster to get in the next two units. Now that Mom and I have a system down it should go smoothly, we hope. 6 weeks left before I go back, keep visiting for updates!!