Thanks to multiple waves of rain, very little photography was done today -- but we still managed to accomplish a good amount of work (mostly by being tolerant of being soaked all day long!). Many of the students continued expanding our metal dectector survey grid -- the "sea of orange, yellow and red flags" visible in the background is about 700 points in that grid.
The image below shows the data added from the metal detector survey today... (you can compare this to yesterday's density map)... The additional data continues to clarify the very high density of artifacts in the "Cabin 1" area.
The image below is another "orthographic projection" with our new data added... (you can also compare this to yesterday's projection)... As we add new data, the image becomes more and more refined -- the oval surrounds the very high "peak" of metal in the area we are investigating; the black line appears to reflect nails along the fenceline extending from these cabins towards the overseer's office.
We did manage to continue excavations in several units beneath "Cabin 1" -- the "midden" (garbage deposit beneath the cabin) continues much deeper than we initially suspected. The photo below shows a broken medicine bottle and shell button discovered today -- probably lying where they were discarded beneath the structure in the 1800s. Hopefully, we'll have enough "rain free" time on Friday to get some better photographs of this area completed!
And finally, work was continued next to the Overseer's office on the yard fence -- two additional posts emerged in addition to the one reported yesterday (all three shown in yellow below). Not too surprising -- we anticipated that the yard fence would have been rebuilt and replaced at least two or three times between 1850 and 1925.
More news tomorrow...