On the west end, our overlapping series of pits continue to grow larger and deeper as we excavate them -- at this point, we're not certain what these represent -- only further investigation will provide the clues. They do not have a large amount of artifacts in them, but the fill is darker and every now and then a large shard or pottery or animal bone is recovered. Below, Matt and Emily work to find the bottom of one of these basins.

The tremendous amount of fill in these basins kept our students and volunteers busy screening through the morning and early afternoon. Below, crew members Matt and Nikki screen at left while volunteer James works with crew member and spouse Salina and volunteer Bill Miller.

The large dense midden deposit continues to extend deeper -- yielding bag after bag of ancient refuse. Below, Dr. Peres works with volunteer and alum Brandy Dacus in this excavation.

The quantity of artifacts in the midden dirt kept many of our volunteers busy (and happy!) retrieving fragments of pottery, small animal bones, and stone tool fragments. Below, Dr. Peres excavates while Tom and Heather screen. At right, Georgia Dennis checks the wheelbarrow. Our regular volunteers Edie and Caroline also assisted during the day with this excavation.

In order to find where this midden begins, we opened another nearby excavation. Below, you can see one of our backfilled units at right -- this unit did not contain the midden. Brady and John quickly but carefully excavated their way through the plowzone in the new unit to expose the top of the midden. Because we already have a sample of the plowzone from the adjacent units, we are not screening the plowzone in this unit. However, volunteers Georgia and Judy are retrieving a "grab bag" sample from the wheelbarrows.

Back on Mound 2, Crew members Nemanja and Natasha work with crew chief Erik and his dad Steve. We are deep as we can safely excavate in our first unit, so a new unit is being opened adjacent. This "step trench" method will give us a partial glimpse of the construction of the mound. Although it was tempting to try to follow the line of posts further, we decided to stick with our original plan for now. Our main goal with this limited mound excavation is to examine the construction sequence -- the unit we are opening should go deep enough to reveal some additional details of the lower strata. If we can reach the slope of the mound, we also hope to encounter some trash deposits thrown over the back side of this mound while it was in use. Perhaps early next week will reveal some more details. If time permits (only two weeks left!), we'll consider pursuing our line of posts further.

Around 2:00 pm, several thundershowers headed our way -- so we closed up early. The rain, although brief, was welcomed by all! Now, the staff and crew look forward to enjoying our one day off from the project. We'll be back on Monday to continue our explorations at Castalian Springs.