Week 6: February 21 (by Kieran)

This week in the field we had another reprieve from the rain; however, it was one of the coldest days we’ve been out so far. Once we’d pumped out the leftover rainwater and uncovered the main block, Sam M. (Sam) and I picked back up piece plotting from where we’d left off the week before. Piece plotting is locating the exact 3D coordinates of an artifact within the established grid system at the site. Sam. and I worked together to first finish the SE quadrant of our unit. I measured the northings, eastings, and centimeters below datum (cmbd) of each artifact with the4 laser level and read them out to Sam so she could record them on the FS log and unit paperwork. After completing the SE quadrant, we moved on to the NW and finally finished our current level of piece plotting with the SW quadrant. We stopped for lunch halfway through piece plotting our final SW quadrant and finished up the remainder of the unit shortly afterwards.

Piece-plotting in the bottom of the block.

The floor of our unit after removal of this round of artifacts.

After lunch I checked in with what stage of excavation everyone else was at with their units. Over the course of the morning Cate and Zoë finished digging down and screening 50 to cmbd in the SE 1X1 meter quadrant of Unit 16. They were moving on to the SW corner of their unit when I caught up with them.

Zoe excavating in Unit 16.

In Unit 15 to the north of the main block where Sam and I have been piece plotting, Lelia, Laura, and Fletcher had reached 40 cmbd and are now working on Level 2 across the whole 2x2. They are excavating it as a natural level, identifying the end of the level by soil color change.

Lelia and Laura screening sediment from Level 2 of Unit 15.

Fletcher excavating in Level 2 of Unit 15.

After our lunch break Dr. White was working beside Lelia, Laura, and Fletcher in Unit 12. He was removing backfill dirt from the unit to re-expose half of a feature located at the base of the second plow zone. The other half of the feature will be located in Unit 15, and Lelia, Laura, and Fletcher were working on excavating down to it as well. Meanwhile, Robert G. and Sara R. were setting up to piece plot in unit 3.

Preparing to piece-plot in Unit 3.

Removing backfill from Unit 12.

Down below the main block, DuVal, Rob L., and James were excavating Unit 14. They had reached Level 4, which was at the bottom of the second plow zone, and were recovering a high quantity of ceramic sherds.

Excavating Unit 14.

For the remainder of the day Sam M. and I worked on piece-plotting the next level down in our unit, which was located in the southern half of Unit 4 and the northern half of Unit 6. Sam M. and I confirmed with Dr. White that that our next step after piece plotting all the artifacts that easily popped out with a trowel at our current level was to shovel scrape down to better expose the artifacts that didn’t easily pop out. We began shovel scraping in the north half of our unit, and  switched to troweling because it worked better to remove the dirt around the artifacts we were preparing to remove. Once we’d pedestalled the artifacts on the north half of the unit (the southern half of Unit 4), we stopped troweling and piece-plotted the exposed artifacts. Sam and I finished piece plotting the next level of artifacts in the north half of our unit before it was time to pack up for the day.

Done for the day with the unit floor protected by landscape fabric and plywood before replacing the tarp.