More artifact washing

The last day of field school was just spent washing artifacts.  Since we were cleaning the finds from our own pits, we didn't find anything new and exciting.  It's a very important part of the process, but it's not really something worth waxing lyric about on a blog.


So that concludes my field school blog.  I hope it wasn't too boring and jargon-laden.

Last Dig Day

We knew this was going to be our last day out in the field, so we needed to get everything as complete as possible for the season.  Unfortunately, it was also kinda drizzly.

Since we were worried about the drizzle turning into full-blown rain at any moment, we worked with the tarp half-covering the units.  Unfortunately, this made it quite hot and muggy especially when the sun started to come out more.

Chris finished up level 5 in the SE quad since he digs faster and we wanted to get this done.  Sam finished removing the wall between our pit and his (EU 18).  I was carrying the buckets from the units to the screens.

Once Sam finished removing the wall, I got into the unit to start working from the other side.  Chris was still working on the SE quad, but we needed to get the NW and SW quads finished as well.  I started working on the NW quad.  It had a lot of annoying roots.  Chris and I were able to finish level 5 completely by attacking the last two quads from different sides.  All in all, level 5 barely produced anything that got bagged and was essentially a sterile level.  Then Chris and I got back out.  Emily and Sammy started to remove the 2 corner-balks along the south wall.  Chris sifted for Emily, and I helped push the annoying clay through the sifter.  Sam drew each wall of the now-continuous pit so the complete stratigraphy could be recorded.  Emily and Sammy got through the dark clay layer (which was considered the end of level 2 in my unit) on both corner-balks.

Then we had to leave our lovely, unified pit. :(

We spent the afternoon washing the artifacts from our units.  It was just standard artifact washing stuff.  We did have a little pizza party though to celebrate the end of our dig.

Digging again!

Chris had gotten through level 4 in the NE and SE quads the day before.  There really wasn't much of anything in them.

So we got the NW and SW quads down to 24in. as well.  Barely anything came out.

By this time, Dru had gotten down to about 39in., so our attempt to match his depth had been thwarted.  So we started Level 5 to get down to match him again.  You would think that a 15in. level would be hard to dig through, but it wasn't.  It was a very soft and loose sand with occasional clumps of a thick pink material.  Basically, you just have to lift out the pink clumps and then you can remove about an inch's worth of sand at a time with one trowel sweep.  So it was actually faster to dig than level 2 (which was only 3in. of a thick clay).

 Chris working on Level 5 while Dru takes out the wall.

Chris completely finished Level 5 in the NE quad.  I got about 5in. down on the SE quad before we had to pack up for the day.  I would have gotten significantly deeper, but a lot of roots started cropping up.  When you clear off sand that quickly, the roots basically have to be chopped after every single time you use the trowel.

After the wall was completely removed, we found a little alien-face soil stain.  Isn't he cute?

Level 5 had lots of buckets when absolutely nothing got caught by the sifter.  Only around 10 very tiny objects came out of the NE quad, and none were found in the SE yet.

Slightly more successfull flint-knapping

We tried flint-knapping again.  This time we had better tools and a more helpful youtube video.  So I managed to make 8 more good scrapers.  Emily actually made a point, although she didn't get it very sharp because it probably would have broken horribly.  I personally preferred using antler for the fine shaping rather than the copper piece.  The copper only seemed to make the rock shiny, and just didn't feel like it delivered as precise of a blow.

While we were flint-knapping, Dr. Knauth came by to do teacher evaluations.  They're a required thing for every class to see what changes should be made in curricula and such.

We flint-knapped a bit more until lunch.  After that I went back to my room to catalog some more artifacts.

Adventures in Flint-Knapping

The weather was, again, supposed to be abysmal.  So we stayed indoors to try a hand at flint-knapping.

It turns out that trying to teach yourself how to flint-knapp with some poor quality chert and rocks you found at a swimming hole based on youtube videos is actually quite challenging.  Some of our chert turned out to just be limestone, and some of the rocks we were using as hammer-stones were softer that chert and so ended up breaking far more than than the rocks we were using them on.  I managed to make one decent scraper, but all of the points I tried to shape kept breaking off large pieces of the tip area.

 Flint-knapping really isn't easy.

After a few hours of this, Dr. Knauth called Robin because she was at Glunk and wanted to see how our dig was going and was wondering where we were.  Then Dr. Knauth came back to the college to check on our class.  It turns out there was a stash of flint-knapping tools in the main Archaeology lab, which Robin does not have access to.  

At that point, it was clear that the weather report had been a lie, and it was actually a lovely day to dig.  So we went out, including Dr. Knauth, to Glunk to get some work done.

Dr. Knauth observing excavations.

We didn't find much of anything in our unit.  There were a few bits of rock, but that was basically it.  We finished up level 3 for the whole unit.  We also determined that our level 4 should be from 21-24in, so we could be level with Dru's unit instead of leaving an awkward lip where the wall was being removed.  We barely got started on that in the NE quad before leaving for the day.

 Chris and Dru tried very hard to keep bits of the wall from collapsing chunks into our unit.

Notebook Catch-up Day

It was scheduled to be rainy and gross on this Friday.  That turned out to be a bunch of lies, but we didn't realize that until well into the day, so we ended up staying inside and doing paperwork.

We spent the first hour or two making sure everyone had notes for every day in their field notebooks.  Then we wrapped up the New Berlin stuff by cataloging all of the remaining artifacts.  STP 2 produced entirely too many rocks, so this process was way more annoying and time-consuming than it needed to be.

So that took all day.

Late Start Day

We didn't start head out to the site until 12 on this day.  Part of that was because there was rain in the morning.  Another part was that some members of NCC8 were going to come out to excavate, and they don't start until around 5pm.  We intended to partially overlap the excavation times.

The site was quite muddy from the morning rain when we got there. Some of the water had made its way into Emily and Sam's pit (EU18).

Chris kept working on level 3 of the SE quad to match the NE depth.  Dru also started removing the wall between the units (starting with the northern half of the wall).

When Chris was done with the SE quad, I started taking down the NW.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make much progress.  Dru took a smoke break, and the wind kept changing direction to blow the fumes directly on me.  Since I'm quite allergic to cigarette smoke, my lungs decided to stop functioning.  I just can't dig when I'm having an allergic reaction, so Sammy drove me back to the college.  When I got there I ended up using my inhaler and taking 4Tbsp. of Benadryl just to be able to breathe again.

Apparently, Chris found a nice rim sherd with punctate decorations on it in the border between the SW and SE quads after I left.  I washed it on a later day, and it's a nice piece.

Preparing to take down the walls and found a large pottery fragment

Remember that sandy matrix in the NE quad of Level 3?  I kept digging it.

It was mostly more of the same.  A lot of chert debitage, some occasional pottery fragments, bits of charcoal scattered around, that sort of thing.  Then I noticed the edge of a fairly long piece of pottery sticking out from the NW quad.  Robin told me to go ahead and dig it out carefully.

This pottery was very fragile.  I gently gripped the side of it to see how thick it was so I could get an idea of how to best remove it, and a piece broke off in my fingers when I wasn't even pulling on it.  I obviously couldn't use a trowel to dig it out because it's just not gentle enough for that kind of work.  So I removed most of the soil from around the pottery with a popsicle stick, then used a dental pick and brush to reveal the surface of the fragment so I would know where it ended and the soil began.

This is me trying to remove the pottery fragment and talk at the same time.  Apparently I can only do one well at a time.

The piece looked very large, like it was half a pot or something, while it was embedded in the soil.  Once I got it out it turned out to be significantly smaller than that, but still unusually large for Native American pottery in this area.

This is the pot fragment in all its radiant glory.

After I finished removing that, I kept digging out the rest of the quad.  Robin told us to arbitrarily end the level at 21in. so that Chris could have a turn to dig another quad.  So level 3 ended up extending from 13-21 in. in our unit.

Chris started digging the SE quad next so that the whole E half of the unit could be down.  We needed the whole E side down so that it would be roughly level with Dru and Sammy's unit (EU 16), so that both units would be roughly even when the wall between them was removed.

We had to leave a bit earlier than planned because rain was predicted to start, even though it ended up not falling.

Back to Glunk

Chris had finished clearing level 1 in all the quads and started on level 2 while I was sick.

We finished up Level 2 in the NW quad, and then got through it from scratch in the NE and SE quads.  Level 2 was mostly a historical layer, with bits of brick, glass, and nails in a clay matrix.

When Level 2, was complete we started Level 3 in the NE quad.  It was my turn to dig at that point.  Level 3 was a lot easier to get through than 2 because it was primarily sand.  Sand digs out and screens much faster and easier than clay.  Level 3 started at around 12-13 in. depending on the specific quad because of the slope of the land.

This level also revealed our first mappable feature in the NE quad.  This feature was a light stain of slightly softer sand.  It originally showed up as a "7" shape with a rounded shape meeting the bottom of the "7."  Gradually the diagonal part of the "7" disappeared, leaving a bar and mound roughly 6 inches apart of lighter colored sand.  If you have a Munsell soil chart handy, then the fact that the light stain was 10YR/4/3 and the surrounding soil was 10YR/4/4 will definitely mean something to you.  For those of you who do not, it basically means that there was really only a slight change in soil color, but it seemed dramatic since they were so close to each other.

 This is the stain from a funny angle.

Level 3 is a purely prehistoric layer.  There was quite a bit of chert debitage and some pottery fragments, but no historical remains at all.  I did not reach the bottom of level 3 yet because we had to pack up and leave for the day.

Muncy

This is the start of a new week after I recovered from my illness and graduated. Yay!

We went to visit the Muncy Historical Society.  In years past, our class had worked with them to excavate facilities associated with the canal that used to run through Muncy.  Since Robin had worked with them, we were able to get a personal tour of their house museum and the heritage park.

It was a very nice and informative tour.  It took about 5 hours altogether though, so I was tired at the end.

After we left Muncy, we had a late picnic lunch and then Robin treated us to ice cream at Eder's.  It's a local ice cream parlor with hand-packed ice cream.

We got a bit lost on the way back because Robin tried to show us a lake in the area, but her GPS wasn't in the car and phones don't get a signal in that stretch of mountains.  So it was a bit of an adventure, but we ended up going in one big circle and were able to get back to the college just fine.

Sick days

I was not able to do any field activities from April 30th to May 2nd because I had a bad stomach bug.  I missed some museum visits on the 30th and digging days on the 1st and 2nd.

Dru brought me some artifacts to catalog so I could make up the hours.  It's cataloging, so it wasn't that interesting and nobody really wants to read a description of it.