Despite predictions of rain, it was a beautiful day for work at the Sam Davis Home. With only four days left in our summer field class, we are beginning to "wind down" and try to finish up the many details that will allow our lab workers to figure out what we "did in the field." We expanded our metal detector survey grid in a "big way" today...
Our survey now covers over 70,500 square feet (shown below in blue). We plan to add another several thousand square feet next week -- pending weather! New density maps and interpretations will be provided next week after I have time to digest the massive amount of new data from data.
Excavations continue on the many features in and around "Cabin 1" -- we have excavated another 5-10 centimeters in depth across this area and found several more postholes and other features. We will focus intensively on this area next week...
Work also continued today on the "yard fence" -- four additional postholes were excavated today... While future excavations will be needed to trace out these various versions of the yard fence, we now think we have at least 3 and possibly four starting points for that fence...
As we begin to close up our project, several different tasks have to be completed to ensure that future researchers can quickly find where we have already worked. Today, we literally set our "invisible grid" in stone -- four of our gridpoints were marked with cement markers. Below, assistant Chris Hogan is preparing the holes for one of these benchmarks...
A finished product is shown below -- the hole is filled with cement, a brass pin is placed, and the gridpoint is labeled. The markers are below the ground surface so they won't impede mowing. Gradually, they will be covered with sod -- but should be fairly easily relocated in the future from our notes.
Other activities include marking our excavation areas and restoring them as closely as possible to their original appearance. The photo below shows one of our excavations units "ready" to be "backfilled." The bottom of the unit is lined with black plastic and then covered with dirt. The plastic bottle at the upper right of the unit contains a cloth tag labeled with the size of the excavation, grid designation, and other information.
The photo below shows one of our completed excavation units after "backfilling." The sifted and aerated soil will provide a good base for grass -- although a small amount of settling may occur, hopefully the only evidence of our excavations will be a shallow depression.
We're all thankful for a "three day weekend" before we dive into the last four days of closing out our project. We've made great progress in the past four weeks -- hard work has resulted in many new discoveries alongside some practical field experience in archaeology.