Week 7: February 28 (by Lelia)

This week was the third week in a row that we had a full day of sunshine and decent temperatures. We are also getting into the groove of getting to the site, unloading the toolbox, removing the tarp and starting on our individual projects. Last Friday, February 21st, Laura, Robert and I leveled all the 1m x 1m quadrants of Unit 15 to create the entire 2m x 2m unit. Once unit 15 was ready to have level 2 removed, I was put in charge of removing the natural layer to the darker soil under the upper plow zone. This week we had Laura, Sami and me working to finish removing level 2 soil out of the unit so that the plow scars would be noticeable before bringing the unit down through level 3. The purpose of this unit is to expose the feature (Feature 16) that appeared to extend into Unit 15 from the unit to the east.  Unit 16 is also coming down as well due to a possible feature in the southeast corner of Unit 6.

When we leveled the unit by a natural layer, we then worked from east to west with trowels to uncover the color mottles that were not as noticeable once the soil had dried out. The Munsell color for the main part of the unit was 10YR3/4 with two lighter mottles of 10YR4/6 and 10YR5/4. The ending depths of our unit were between 58cm and 61.2cm below datum across the unit.


In the transition between upper and lower plow zone, we were finding higher numbers of much larger flakes, fire-cracked rock, and pottery sherds. An interesting rim sherd in particular we found and it has incised markings on the rim. When we started level three Laura was put in charge of the unit and we were also finding some complicated stamped pottery sherds. Larger amounts of flakes and larger rocks along with the higher number of pottery are normal for the lower plow zone. This is because when this area of land was plowed, artifacts from the lower strata were brought up and mixed together with upper layers.

Dr. White showing Laura how to cut the walls.

A rim sherd recovered from Unit 15.

Kieran and Sam were in the northern half of Unit 4 and southern half of Unit 6 working on piece plotting. Sarah and Robert were working in Unit 3 and they were piece plotting while digging further down the strata. This was also the second week in a row that Unit 14 downstairs was not collapsed due to rain and flooding which is always a plus.