Exploring a bit more of the new state property, this starkly beautiful but almost dead tree was the perch of one of our hawk friends this morning (sitting on a branch on the left side).

A telephoto shot shows a bit more detail after the hawk hopped over to another branch...

We continued work in our three excavation areas today (in the morning). Beth, Barrett, and Jonathan finished up excavations of the pit feature and will finish paperwork on it on Wednesday.

Over on our circular pit/structure, we completed cleanup of the next excavations for photographs and drawings. As we expose more of the entire feature, we start to get a better understanding of it. Further excavations of these areas on Wednesday will undoubtedly reveal new artifacts from the garbage filling it -- and some new clues to its original purpose and function.

Jesse, Bekah, and Meagan continued work on our features near the wall trenches today. As a reminder, we thought we had identified a large posthole yesterday (outlined in yellow)...

Below, Jesse is carefully working on that large posthole...

As the team proceeded deeper into the "possible" posthole, it turned into a "definite" posthole... The photo below shows the carefully exposed remnants of a carbonized post fragment still surviving in the hole...

Proceeding deeper, we discovered something even more amazing -- fragments of this large post are preserved unburned. We began to recover sections of red cedar like those below...

By the time we closed up for the day -- we had exposed a very large cedar post. As shown below, it is partially carbonized on one side and unburned on the other. We have hopes that excavations on Wednesday morning will reveal another foot or so of preserved post that we can retrieve for future analysis.

We were visited by two of our annual volunteers -- Will and Wade (grandchildren of our old friend Carrie Mabrey). Below, I'm showing them some of the discoveries of the day.

These guys are not just here to look though -- they always insist on pitching in full speed with archaeological "diggings." Last year, they dove into our project with shovels in hand ...

This year was not different. Richard and Natalie had started excavating another unit to expose another corner of our wall trench house... Will and Wade once again took shovels in hand to assist us in our work...

After lunch, I decided we should do our annual tour of Wynnewood and Bledsoe's Fort Park -- and postpone continuing our digs until Wednesday morning. The crew has been working super-hard and completed an amazing amount of work in only three weeks. While we have a lot left to complete -- we also need to take some "downtime" to both rest up and to expand our appreciation of the amazing historic and prehistoric sites within walking distance of where we work.

Our new friend Nettie Bates and old friend Lee Myers provided a tour of Wynnewood for the team...

And we continued our tradition of traveling the trails in Bledsoes Fort Historical Park where many past years of MTSU field schools have toiled to discover things about the past of this community and Tennessee.

Back to the "Digs" on Wednesday morning -- hopefully refreshed and invigorated for our last few days of fieldwork this summer.