Despite getting a bit more rain this week than we'd like - it was a really productive week because the students didn't let a little bit of water (or in some cases a lake) in their units slow them down.
At the beginning of the week we had some mapping work to do - both digitally and using old hand held techniques. Once we got this started, we were able to begin excavating the features in earnest. At KCV we had one problem ... we kept finding more posts - around features, in features, all over the place. In the end we found nearly fifty posts - and while we haven't bisected all of them yet we're fairly confident we found the wall of a house. On top of that, we found lots of other fun things as well.
Most all of Monday was spent mapping - our feature paperwork got plan view mapped in by hand, and we also mapped everything with a TDS to put into the digital map.
We had to start the day bailing water out of our units ... sadly, this was not the last time we'd have to do it this week.
Sean using the TDS - each student took a turn learning to use the Total Data Station - their partner used the rod (prism) to map in their features.
Sam holding the rod for Sean - not quite as cool as "sharks with freak'in laser" but still pretty fun - Michael and AmySue mapping Feature 17-03 by hand
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent working on our first features. The students quickly learned how to take down a feature trench and then excavate the feature.
Feature 17-01, excavated by AmySue and Michael ended up being a relatively shallow basin (10 cm below plow zone).
Feature 17-07 on the other hand went down a bit deeper
and there was a large post in the FT
The feature itself ended up going down 45 cm below the plow zone - we also found a big piece of pottery that we pedestaled because it ran right into the wall of the feature.
By the end of the day Wednesday - we had a pretty good handle on how many posts we had in our unit ... and it looks like we have a double northern wall of a house that turns south near Feature 17-02 ... the red flags below show where most of the posts are in the northern wall of the structure.
This week also brought us some unexpected goodies
We picked up a canopy that works well as both a sunshade and an umbrella ... best of all, it fits over our unit almost perfectly
The land owners also showed us some of the stuff in their collection - including the lithics below
Friday morning was interesting - A bad storm over night brought a lot of water to our site and even punched a few holes in the tarp. It may not look like as much water as earlier in the week, but that's because the holes are much deeper this time. Once we got the water cleared out we got a lot of work done.
For example, Feature 17-02 had some goodies come out by the end of the day - AmySue and Michael found a cluster of pottery - based on the decor present on many of them, they were likely part of the same vessel. Carcajou rim with incised lines and trailed nested chevrons - likely a Thunderbird motif
Directly underneath the cluster of pottery was a cluster of shell
After a finishing F17-39 and a long day of profile mapping Sam and Sean were quite happy to get to start taking the north half of F17-07 out for flotation.
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