This was really just a prep day to make sure we had everything together before we went out digging. In the morning, Emily and I organized the papers and equipment to figure out what needed to come with us into the field and what should stay in Robin Van Auken's office (she's our teacher and field director). I duct-taped some dust pans together since they had cracked even though the were brand new. I also obsessively checked every single pen and sharpie to make sure they still had ink and sharpened all the pencils. That didn't take all morning though, so we also cataloged some artifacts from previous years of excavation.
Around 2pm, we went out to the Glunk site. We cleaned out the storage shed on site to get rid of anything that had gotten moldy or eaten by mice. Luckily there was only one mouse corpse in the shed and almost all of the stuff was still usable. Then we went to go check out the excavation units. We removed the tarp and the archy-canopy thingy that keeps it over the squares so we could take a look. 3 square were already started, although they had deteriorated some from weathering even with the tarp protecting them. Paul Glunk was out and about riding a tiny bulldozer, so he came over to talk with us. Robin introduced us and pointed out the area where we wanted to open up new excavation units. Unfortunately, the space we were going to dig in happened to be where the previous units had been sifting, so there was a lot of soil build-up. Mr. Glunk very helpfully used his little bulldozer to clear off the sifted material and some of the topsoil. That probably saved us a day or two of useless digging. After we thanked Mr. Glunk, he went off to continue his work.
After that Chris tied 2 of the sifters and the 3 square-bottom shovels from the tool shed to the top of Robin's car so we would be able to use them at New Berlin on the 6th. Since we had everything set up to go out tomorrow, we went back to the college and were set loose.
Around 2pm, we went out to the Glunk site. We cleaned out the storage shed on site to get rid of anything that had gotten moldy or eaten by mice. Luckily there was only one mouse corpse in the shed and almost all of the stuff was still usable. Then we went to go check out the excavation units. We removed the tarp and the archy-canopy thingy that keeps it over the squares so we could take a look. 3 square were already started, although they had deteriorated some from weathering even with the tarp protecting them. Paul Glunk was out and about riding a tiny bulldozer, so he came over to talk with us. Robin introduced us and pointed out the area where we wanted to open up new excavation units. Unfortunately, the space we were going to dig in happened to be where the previous units had been sifting, so there was a lot of soil build-up. Mr. Glunk very helpfully used his little bulldozer to clear off the sifted material and some of the topsoil. That probably saved us a day or two of useless digging. After we thanked Mr. Glunk, he went off to continue his work.
This is Mr. Glunk clearing off the the sifted soil from previous years.
