Before proceeding with excavation, we have to carefully record all of the information in both photographs -- and drawings. Many of the "features" that we can see "close up and personal" do not show up well in photographs. In fact, some of the features are not so much "seen" as "felt" -- dirt that is precisely the same "color" may "feel" different with the trowel because it is looser, or harder, or contains tiny fragments of brick or mortar. Teasing an understanding of the many things that have happened in and around our "chimney base" over the past 150+ years is something both of science and of art.

After further cleaning and mapping of the area, our interpretation of various features changed from Friday... The first photograph below shows our interpretation from Friday...

The photo below shows our changing interpretation as we begin to investigate these features more thoroughly... The light blue circles show newly defined probable postholes. The areas outlined in red are what we think are old burrows from various sized rodents -- mice, rats, groundhogs, 'possums, etc.

In addition to photography and mapping, before beginning excavation of the "chimney base," we had to excavate several other "features." In the photo above, the "white filled circles" represent postholes that are intrusive into the chimney base. In simple terms, these are postholes that were dug after the chimney was gone and "intruded" into that feature. While perhaps difficult to explain on a web page, we try to excavate overlapping features in "reverse order" of the time they were created. We can tell that these postholes were dug after the chimney base -- so we take them out first. This allows us to segregate the "newer artifacts" that might be in the "newer postholes" from the "older artifacts" that are in the undisturbed parts of the chimney base. We excavated the intrusive postholes today -- and began a "cross-section" of the chimney base -- the area below the white line crosscutting the chimney base feature (outlined in blue).

As we continued through the day, we also opened another excavation unit -- shown in the photo above in cross-hatched yellow lines at the right. In order to interpret the multiple postholes that we have in this area, we need to see a slightly larger area.

We will spend several more days figuring out what precisely is going on in this area. Each posthole has to be examined carefully for size, location, contents, and other information. Based on what we have figured out up through today, we can interpret several of the postholes we have found. The image below shows the existing fenceline (with the post and rails we removed in yellow) -- and an older version of this same fenceline simulated in black-filled postholes, posts, and planks. Each of the posts show in "black" contains the same kind of post, similar diameter, similar depth, and similar spacing. So, we can explain those postholes. The others we have investigated so far contain different kinds of posts, different sizes, and/or spacings that don't match that fenceline. So, we will continue to investigate each of these postholes -- carefully recording their size, contents, depths, and spacing -- in order to figure out "which ones seem to go together."

Although we're not positive, we think the old fenceline "reconstructed" in the photo above may well be the remains of the plank fence in the 1975 photo below...

Beyond our investigations around Structure 1, we expanded our excavations in several different areas to gain a better understanding of the distribution of artifacts and possible other structure locations. To the north of our current excavations, we continue to look for evidence of a possible "second row" of structures -- we opened new excavations there this morning.

To the west of Structure 1, we also opened a new excavation today -- the size of the chimney base suggests that it might be a "central chimney" with a room both to the west and east. Fairly quickly, students found an ash and mortar filled feature (see the "white stuff" in the excavation).

Other students continued work on the edge of the cotton field -- searching for additional evidence of cabins...

As we started investigating the chimney base, we found several white glass buttons -- two of those are shown below (including a fancy one)...

Saving the "bad news" for last... much of the area that we need to investigate further is in the treeline and cotton field just outside the current fenceline. While we have several more things to investigate in our current and new excavation units -- we will have to step back and re-evaluate what we can do effectively over our remaining few days. More news on Tuesday evening....