Today was a more typical June day for Middle Tennessee -- hot and humid, but we still had a little breeze starting around 8;30 that lasted most of the day. We even had a few friendly clouds pass over in the afternoon that gave a brief respite.
We continued work in five of our first seven excavation units -- the artifacts continue to show up even as we proceed to 60+ centimeters (about 2 feet). In several of the units, we seem to be coming down on what may be the remnants of a Mississippian house set in an excavated basin. Another day or two and we should have some better answers to that question.
We continue to find ample evidence of people who lived around Castalian Springs even before the folks who built the mounds at the site. The projectile point below dates to more than two thousand year ago.
Screening recovers many more artifacts than would be found just in digging. Below, Salina and Tyler pick through the dirt to find the smallest artifacts.
Some of the more intriguing pieces of pottery coming out today was a fragment of a jar handle -- this would have been a handle to a very large pot, holding a couple of gallons.
We also found the intriguing and somewhat mysterious pottery object shown below. It is a solid node or pode of large size -- somewhat unusual for the Middle Tennessee area. We suspect at this point that it is the top of a very large "hooded bottle" -- more fragments will probably be retrieved on Tuesday.
A number of the students assisted project directors Smith and Beahm in a very tedious and sweaty project today -- creating the first detailed topographic map of the mound site. Although standing out in the middle of a field in the hot sun carrying a surveying rod is certainly close to the bottom of the list of exciting things to do -- it is critical to producing a new map of the site that will help us to understand the layout of the earthworks.
Tomorrow promises to bring some additional insights into the peoples who lived here about a thousand years ago.