Week 16 of Field School 2018: Wrapping it up

11. December 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)
Week of December 3
by Ashley Dumas

We worked three days this week. Sparky redrew the east profile for Unit 201 and finished his notes on this interesting unit. It has the most detailed and clear stratigraphy of any unit we have excavated at the site and will likely continue to inform us about the history of the site when all the dirt is screened. He lined the unit with plastic and backfilled it with sand. Units 203, 204, and 205 were cleaned off so that we could see possible features and draw the units. There is definitely a small trench about 20 cm wide running east-west between 203 and 204. It has chunks of chalk and artifacts such as bone fragments and nails in it. We did not, unfortunately, have time to excavate all of it, but it is well-photographed, paperwork was started, and it will relatively easy to access again in the future. In one corner of Unit 205 was a slightly darker patch of clay. I bisected it and found it to be a small depression about 15 cm deep and, to my surprise, it produced a fragment of Choctaw pottery, lead shot, a brass "eye" from a hook-and-eye closure, and bone fragments. I might have called it an unremarkable depression in the midden if it hadn't been for the abundant fragments of chalk. We are learning that post holes or bases of posts are characterized at the fort by chunks of chalk, from many tiny bits to double-fist-sized chunks. The chalk seems to have been used to support the posts, and we are finding only the remnants of the bases, and/or the chalk was used to chock posts as they rotted. This Unit 204 feature was recorded as a possible post, drawn, and photographed. 

As a series of three adjacent one-meter square units, 203, 204, and 205 are unusual in that the color of the clay changes. It is yellowish brown in 203 but becomes more orange toward 205 in the south. However, there is a stark difference between the eastern and western halves of 205, the former being strong orange and the latter more brown. If we are correct about clay being brought in from elsewhere, then the color differences may represent different loads of clay from different sources. After all three units were documented, they were carefully lined with plastic and backfilled.

Sarah worked vigorously to finish Unit 212 and was aided by Daniel. the bottom of the unit, where the Layer B midden meets the chalk bedrock, was undulating and of varying depths. The east-west trench we'd seen in 2014 is there, but it turns out to take up the entire width of Unit 212! The deepest part is on the southern end, only a few feet from the edge of the ravine. It seems certain now that the trench was dug for a palisade wall that is not depicted on the 1737 map of the fort (see Virtual Tour section of the website). The midden, just like the midden that was found inside the palisade wall in 2012 and 2014, is full of artifacts: bones, European and Choctaw ceramics, nails, glass, and a possible British gun spall. We ran out of time before we could completely excavate the trench, so we will did not backfill this unit. I hope to return over the Christmas break and complete the feature. 

So! between August and December, the students shovel tested west and north of the fort. They confirmed the lack of much activity just west of the fort but discovered that Indian occupation north of the fort was more extensive in space and time than previously understood. The pottery from tests there suggests that it was a village as early as 1500 years ago. Only a single musket ball can tie that area to the historic period, but now we know where to look more closely in the future. 
At the fort itself, we completed several important units that had been last been excavated in 2014 but had left us a bit confused, and we found two new features. The trench feature near the ravine is particularly exciting, and I'll keep you all updated on what it turns out to look like and what sort of artifacts are associated with it. 

Finally, I want to brag on this bunch of students, all of them Anthropology minors. One of them took the initiative to inquire about museum internships at the Irish National Museum. One of them has applied for contract archaeology jobs in Alabama to get more experience and has designed a specialized major in order to take more Anthropology courses. Another applied to and was accepted to a field school in Poland and has submitted applications to graduate programs. And another is arranging for a year in France, where I know he will find fabulous archaeology and might be asked to do some archival research for one of his professors (hint hint!). Most importantly, these UWA undergraduates are simply a pleasure to be around. Their initiative, dedication, and curiosity give them a permanent invitation to work at Fort Tombecbe or any site with which I'm associated.

Week 15 of Field School 2018

11. December 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)
Field blog post for November 27 and 29
by Ashley Dumas
After the trip described for last week's blog, you might imagine how tired we are this week. But, this is a great group of dedicated students, and everyone showed up. Water had to be bailed out of the units, as Alabama received more rain (and even a bit of snow!) than Ireland did last week. Sparky's Unit 201 is still producing a bit of animal bone from the top few centimeters of clay. Using a 1-inch diameter soil corer, he demonstrated that there is an additional 28 cm of clay before the chalk bedrock. The clay is similar to the orangey brown clay we have now found pockets of across the site (see last year's field school blog, too). It is not naturally found on top of these chalk bluffs, and last year's discovery of swamp tupelo fruits mixed with the clay strongly suggests that it was brought in from somewhere else along the Tombigbee. One of the historic records from 1763 mentions that the French had been having a problem with erosion at the fort; perhaps hauling in clay was part of the solution? In any case, there are wide swaths of it, at least one meter across, in the area of the barracks. I don't intend to have the students excavate all of it from the units, because it is miserable digging, bears no artifacts, and would reward us only with bedrock beneath it. I think the few pieces of bone Sparky has recovered from the upper part of the clay were pressed into it and are not contemporary with it. 

Unit 204, being troweled by Michael and Daniel, is also clayey, but it remains a darker brown color. A strip of slightly darker soil with bits of broken chalk runs along the south edge. This may prove to be a feature. 

In Unit 212, Sarah has removed all of the Layer A topsoil and is now in Layer B, a dark grey midden soil. Just this afternoon, she has found multiple bone fragments, red-painted Choctaw pottery, and small (less than 2 cm) fragments of brick. 

This is technically the last week of classes, but the gang said they want to work during finals week, too, so we have paced ourselves to finish next week. 

Weeks 13 and 14 of Field School 2018

11. December 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)

For weeks of November 12 and 19

In next week’s post, I’ll wrap up our thoughts on what we accomplished at Fort Tombecbe this season. However, this week’s final blog posts from the students for 2018 are about their trip to Ireland. Sarah, Michael, Daniel, and Sparky were part of a group of 25 UWA students who participated in the UWA in Ireland course “Culture, Nation, and the State in Ireland,” co-taught by Dr. Lesa Shaul (English), Dr. Rob Riser (History), and me. We were there for ten days over the Thanksgiving Holiday and visited many historical and archaeological sites. We hope you enjoy their posts about some of their favorite places.

Neolithic Passage Tombs

By Michael Hornsby

 

Hello again everyone!!

As a few of you know, the 2018 Field School has decided to take one heck of a break. All of us, and I do mean all of us, will be leaving the country and coming back in a little over a week. We will be going to Ireland and looking at various archaeological sites to get a better understanding of a different culture. In addition to this instead of just hearing from me, you will also get an article on a different subject from every other student who has been posting articles over the past semester. Don’t worry though, mine will still be here if you get sick of reading the others. On that note, I think it is time to get going so I will finish this on the return trip.

Alright guys, we are officially, and sadly, back in the States. I will be covering a little bit about the history and structure of passage tombs and a few that we saw while there. So, for anyone who doesn’t know what a passage tomb is, here is a random definition you can find online:

A passage grave or passage tomb consists of a narrow passage made of large stones and one or multiple burial chambers covered in earth or stone. The building of passage tombs was normally carried out with megaliths and smaller stones; they usually date from the Neolithic Age.

Now that that boring definition is out of the way, imagine a hallway with one or two doors branching off and then put that inside a circle. You now have at the simplest level the base plan of a passage tomb. Image result for drawing of a passage tomb                  Image result for passage tomb aerial view                                                   

One of the coolest things about a passage tomb is the precision of them to this day. I know some of you must be thinking what is precise about a big pile of rocks. Well, the passages are usually lined up with a solstice or equinox that will only occur one day out of a year. Now think of when these were built 5,000 years ago, they didn’t have electronics or fancy equipment. These were hand built and the rocks used were brought in sometimes from far away. These tombs took years to build and still to this day line up with the sun or sunset one day out of the year. The people who were buried in them were usually a chieftain and other members of his extended family. The big tombs helped mark their territory to farming land in a particular region. We visited the Loughcrew Passage Tomb (image 1) and the Creevykeel tomb (images 2 and 3), both dating to the Neolithic about 3500 BC, or more than 5000 years ago.



Cavan Burren

By Daniel Rhodes

 

Sadly, this will be my final blog entry for the semester. I have really learned a lot and had a lot of fun doing it. So, we as a class decided to do something a little different for our final entries, as some of you may know the four of us Michael, Sarah, Connor and myself recently went on a school trip to Ireland and we each decided to write about something we liked or something we learned on the trip. I chose to write about Cavan Burren. Cavan Burren is a massive Archaeological and Geological marvel. It’s full of wide-open spaces, beautiful forests and so much more. Our guide Seamus (He has a last name, but I won’t even attempt to try and spell it.) took us through the sprawling landscapes and told us the history of the park, like the Glacier erratics, which are large stones that had been transported by a glacier and left behind after it melted), and early stone works that if you look really close you could see the tool marks, even though they were thousands of years old. He also shared a little folklore about the fairies that lived in the forest. Cavan Burren has passage tombs (see image below) and many large circles made of stones, which were probably Neolithic houses or enclosures for houses. It is no surprise that the Celtic people who showed up thousands of years later made up stories about giants and fairies to explain these abandoned stone structures. All in all, it was awesome and that was just small part of a truly amazing trip. 


Bog Bodies

By Sarah Coffey

The last couple days of our trip to Ireland were spent in Dublin. On Saturday, we spent the morning at the National Museum of Natural History and Archaeology. Among the exhibits were some of the world-famous bog bodies. True to their name, the bodies are recovered from peat bogs around Europe. Due to the cool, waterlogged environment, the peat turns acidic with low levels of oxygen that almost perfectly preserve any organic material. Four bog bodies found in Irish peat bogs were on display with information on their discovery. All of the bodies on display were dated to the Early Iron Age between 400 BC and 400 AD. The oldest, Gallagh Man, is a nearly complete set of remains. The skin was paper-thin, covering bone. After reading the plaque discussing his discovery in the early 19th century, I learned that Gallagh Man is slowly disintegrating. Upon first being discovered, he had some hair and parts of a beard left, but over the years, they have disappeared, leaving bare skin that barely covers his skull. Probably the most fascinating were Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man. Although the only pieces recovered was the torso and arms and the head (in the case of Clonycavan Man), they are probably the most well preserved of the bog bodies on display.The skin of both bodies has turned brown and slightly dry from the tanic acid in the peat bog, but they are the most human-like. Oldcroghan still had very noticeable fingernails on his hands and Clonycavan still had hair on his crushed-head.Overall, being able to see this exhibit gave more insight on how different environments can preserve human remains and other archaeological artifacts in different ways.

 

Donegal Castle

By Connor Sparks

 

On our trip to Ireland, we had the opportunity to visit Donegal Town in the County of Donegal. There we were able to go to a castle that was owned by the O’Donnell clan, one of the most powerful Gaelic families in Ireland from the 5th to 16th centuries. The castle is beautiful; it sits on a small water way, and the keep has three stories of wonderful architecture and held so much history in its walls. During 1607, the leaders of the O’Donnell clan fled Ireland after a failed revolt from the English and the lands were given to an English Captain by the name of Basil Brooke. Once given the castle, he made many additions to the castle, windows, a gable and a manor house wing to the side of the keep. With the additions to the castle, the Brookes family renovated the 2nd and 3rd floor of the keep. They wanted a homier feeling than that of the Gaelic style. The bottom floor stayed the same because they had no use or need to go there because it was for the servants and help. When we walked through the castle and walking on the same floor that people that long ago walked on was amazing. If you ever find yourself in Ireland, do yourself the favor and travel to Ulster, County Donegal and then to Donegal Town to visit this magnificent piece of architecture and history.

Week 12 of Field School 2018

11. December 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)

Field blog for November 6 and 8

By Connor Sparks

 11/6: Today in class we continued in our units in the barracks. I started into the last layer of my unit. Unit 201 was very hard to dig through because it was all very thick clay and not very fun. Dr. Dumas thinks the clay is not natural for this blufftop and was probably dug up by someone in the 18th century and brought to the fort site to help level the ground and stop erosion. Michael, Daniel and Sarah all still have this very easy dirt and it is very easy to dig up. Michael has been finding a lot of nails in his top layers of his dirt. They are very pristine and dropped like in rows, so it could be from where the barracks were caught on fire and dropped down. We don’t have that many more days left in class, especially with all of us going to Ireland next week. Really hope we can all finish what we have left and to see what artifacts we can find in the remaining layers of our units.

Here is a photo of me using a bamboo pick to carefully remove animal bone from the clay layer. 

Here are Daniel and Michael working on Unit 204 in the soggy clay. 

11/8: We did not go out into the field today; it rained all last night and well into the morning making it extremely muddy and unsafe for our profile walls. Instead we stayed in and tried our best to water screen the millions of buckets we have in the lab. We got a good amount of the buckets done and found some bones and Indian pottery in some of the buckets. Next week we will all be traveling to Ireland, so our blog post will be a little different. We will all be writing an entry on a different thing we saw or did while we were there. We cannot wait to share with everyone our adventure abroad in a different country. 

Week 11 of Field School 2018

11. December 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)

Field blog for October 30th and November 1st

By Daniel Rhodes


 

Sarah and I have been working in/on our Unit 212 for about a week now. Instead of using a shovel and getting through multiple layers of earth at a time, we use trowels and scrape the dirt away inch by inch, which is a lot more frustrating but also a lot more precise. We are also going to map the location of each artifact as we uncover them. Their positions in the ground may turn out to be patterned. For example, a bunch of nails in a line could mean that a wall was once there. Dr. Dumas chose this area because students in other field school classes had a lot of success in finding artifacts in the area, part of a trench, and also because it is behind where the barracks of the fort were located when the fort was occupied and operational. The artifacts in this area may be every-day sorts of items that were thrown or swept out the back doors of barracks. They could give us a lot of insight into how the soldiers lived.

Here is a photo of Sarah and I screening: 

Michael and Sparky each had a unit to work on, I think they made more progress than we did because they were digging in areas that other students had already started in previous field schools. Most of what we were digging was on the surface. We spent the entire class time just scraping away inch after inch of dirt and really the only thing we found were roots (and a new appreciation for shovels, of course.) Below is a photo of all of us at work in our units, which cut across perpendicularly where the barracks building once sat.

November 1st

It had severely rained here over the past two days so we decided not to go out to the fort, instead Dr. Dumas showed us a device that Archaeologists use for marking off and creating digital maps of sites and areas for later review in labs. She showed us how to use and calibrate (I think that is the correct term) the Total Station then she left us to each take turns and learn how to use it. One person sets up the laser-shooting transit and the other holds up a pole with a prism in it to create a line covering the distance between them. It was really cool; I’ve never used anything like it before so it was tough to set up because the device has to be exactly level. It also has to be incredibly precise, like even being a half inch out of line can mess up the measurements.

Week 9 of Field School 2018

11. December 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)

Field Blog for October 18

by Sarah Coffey

This week we were only working at the Fort on Thursday, due to Tuesday being Assessment Day and classes being cancelled. On Thursday, Daniel and I dug a shovel test five meters north of a previous shovel test that had produced a wrought nail. This was labeled Shovel Test 26. No artifacts were found, as the chalk subsoil was only about 15 centimeters below the surface. There is only a light scattering of artifacts, none really near one another, in this area west of the fort, which tells us there may not have been any structures or many activities there. While we worked on this, Michael and Sparky started digging out the backfill on Unit 201 around the Barracks. (See the Virtual Tour part of the website for a map of where we are in the fort.) The backfill was from a 2014 dig and it is industrial (sterile) sand, so it was easy to see where the edge of the unit was compared to the sand. Unit 201 was previously dug through 2 or 3 layers of artifact-rich soil and Michael and Sparky will continue working on excavating the other layers until they reach the chalk subsoil. This unit is of particular interest because it is where the 1790’s Spanish earthworks cover the earlier French and English-period Barracks location. The earthworks protected the location of earlier artifacts that may be under the Spanish earthworks. The 2014 dig ended before the excavators could finish excavating all the layers, but they did find pieces of a French platter. All pieces were from the same platter, and today Sparky found another piece that seems to also belong with the platter.

Once Daniel and I finished the shovel test, we moved to Unit 212 around the Barracks, due South of Unit 201 that Michael and Sparky were working in. After raking and clearing as much debris we could, we measured out a 1 meter by 1 meter square, referred to as a unit, and marked the four corners. After marking the corners, we started scraping the soil with trowels and only got a couple centimeters deep before we had to leave for the day. The soil is pretty hard and has a clay texture, so the first layer of this unit will be difficult the dig. In 2014, the edge of a builder’s trench was found here. The trench seems to be running east to west along the edge of the ravine and may have been a trench for a palisade wall to protect the south part of the fort. By digging Unit 212, we are hoping to find the rest of the trench.  

Week 10 of Field School 2018

11. December 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)
Field blog for October 23  and 25
by Ashley Dumas

With apologies to Indiana Jones fans, this was a bit of a dull week, which sometimes happens in archaeology. On the 23rd, Connor (Sparky) continued to familiarize himself with Unit 201 by reading all of the field notes made by Lee Reissig, the student who excavated here in 2014. Lee dug through the upper layer of earth and chalk rubble from the earthworks built by the Spanish in 1794. Underneath he found a layer of orangey ash, mortar, and lots of nails, which we suspect may have been caused by the barracks burning in the 1760's during or after the English occupied the fort. Underneath that layer was a mixture of brown clays with many artifacts, including nails, ceramics, a gunflint, and all sorts of items indicating this was a midden (trash) layer associated with people living in the barracks. Near the end of the 2014 dig, he found portions of a large platter (see last week's blog post). Sparky must now finish the excavations down to the chalk bedrock if possible. Below is a sketch that was made in the field book in 2014 as we were beginning to decipher what this unit was telling us. 


Michael has also been tasked with completing a unit that was left unfinished in 2014. Located underneath where we believe the barracks to have been, Unit 204 had a midden rich with artifacts on the surface but then a layer of clay slowed progress and it was ultimately left incomplete. So far, Michael is learning just how unpleasant it can be to excavated clay. To this point, we screen all dirt from this area through 1/16" screen (window screen) to catch the tiniest of artifacts, but the clay may require a new approach or make this impractical altogether. 

It rained on Thursday, so we spent the day in the laboratory washing artifacts and screening dirt. 

Week 7 of Field School 2018

25. October 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)

by Daniel Rhodes

Field Blog October 2 and 4

 

October 2

In the past week, we have turned our attention away from the area outside of Fort Tombecbe would have initially been into an area further east closer to the property line. This area isn't as easy to access because on one side of the "path" (I put that in quotes because it isn't a path) are incredibly thick trees and fine brush, and on the other side is an incredibly sharp barbed wire fence. The reason we have chosen this area is that it is mentioned quite frequently in documentation by inhabitants of the fort as areas where a Choctaw village was located. We started as we always do, doing a surface investigation with some success finding bits of glass and pottery. We started planting our flags for our shovel test markers, making them five meters apart instead of the usual ten, because we had a lot more area to cover than the previous area. It seemed like every shovel test we found something of note almost instantly, everything from bits of pottery (pictured below) to a full-sized musket ball, even a burnt bone chunk (I know chunk is not very scientific). Most of the pottery sherds were caked with dirt and mud. After cleaning that off, Dr. Dumas suggested giving it a little lick (I'm not joking about this part.) It helps to tell the difference between the surface texture of a pottery sherd and an ordinary rock. I may or may not have called it "Tasting History." After that, we called it a day. When I got back to my apartment,  brushed my teeth several times to make sure I got the taste of history out of my mouth.


October 4th

Today started like any other. We did a few more shovel tests and used letters to mark them on our map this time so as not to mix them up with samples we had taken from previous shovel test area. All tests will be assigned a Field Specimen number, or F.S. number to keep them separate from one another. We managed to get tests I through Q completed, so we got a lot accomplished testing-wise. We found a few pottery sherds but little else. We will have to wait and see what results further screening gives us. Connor saw a grub worm in one of his tests then proceeded to eat it (I didn't see him eat it, but I can't say for sure that he didn't so…). We packed up and return to the lab and called it a day. Earlier this week Dr. Dumas loaned me the monograph by James Pate that has all his research on the Fort's history. It details the French, English, Spanish, and American occupations. It's so detailed, it has letters and correspondence between people who occupied the fort and people at outposts elsewhere. The part I wanted to focus on was the recorded interactions between the fort occupants and the Native Americans that lived around the fort at the time since so much of what we have found lately was Native in origin. Since I don't have the knowledge to say for sure, I could only guess that most of the pottery we've found was Choctaw and Proto-Choctaw (What the Choctaw were before they were the Choctaw). We’ve found some shell-tempered pottery, which is pottery made from shells most likely collected from the Tombigbee River and grog-tempered pottery, which is pottery made from old or broken pottery. The reason I assume it is Choctaw is because they are recorded to have numbered in the thousands as compared to the French occupation of maybe a hundred at the time and how the French depended on them for survival in the harsh colonial age of Alabama. I think this is an excellent place to end the week. I've learned a lot and want to keep reading so I can learn more.

Week 8 of Field School 2018

25. October 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)

by Connor Sparks

Field blog October 9th and 11th

 

This past week in field school was not a very busy week. Tuesday in class, Dr. Dumas had to give a talk out of town so we stayed in the lab and worked for a couple of hours. Michael and myself wrote an article for the “Stone and Bones,” the newsletter for the Alabama Archaeological Society. We wrote about our field school and provide a brief history of the fort. Sarah and Daniel took some artifacts and bagged them and properly labeled them with F.S. numbers (see Daniel’s post of last week for an explanation).


Thursday was a very interesting day. Dr. Dumas had her two boys out in the field with us and it was one of the best days out there. We started doing some shovel testing in the woods, to the east and north of the Indian village, where we found some pottery. We wanted to extend our search transects, or lines of shovel tests, into the woods to see how far we the Indian Village went. The pottery we found there, like the pottery we have already found, was made of shell fragments (shell tempered) and some grog. With the finding of different types of pottery, we have an idea of just how long this area has been inhabited, as some types were popular at different times or with different groups of people. Had we continued finding pottery into the woods, we could have deduced that the village went much farther than we thought. We stopped digging once we did not find any more pottery. The shell-tempered, grog-tempered, and even some sand-tempered pottery tells us that this spot of prairie near the Tombigbee River was lived on by different groups of native people for many centuries.


Next week we are returning to the fort to uncover an area in the barracks that was excavated once before in 2014 by a previous field school. We look forward to learning different types of excavation techniques. One funny thing that happened this day was Dr. Dumas’s son (8-years old) gave all of us funny names from Dr. Seuss books. Sarah was Thing One, Daniel was Thing Two, I was Red Fish, and Michael was Blue Fish. He then gave Dr. D a funny nickname, Angry White Fish, from her white shirt and then the fact that she was a little angry with him. All in all, it was a very good week at the fort and I look forward to the remaining weeks left in the semester. 


Week 6 of Field School 2018

9. October 2018 Fort Tombecbe (0)

by Michael Hornsby

Field Blog For 9/25 & 9/27

 

9/25- Also my Birthday

 

To Our Dearest Readers,

 

Please bear with me as I write this for we are unbelievably close to the end, and I am trembling with excitement. As many of you know, for the past several weeks the four of us-Sarah Coffey, Connor Sparks, Daniel Rhodes, and myself (Michael Hornsby), not to mention the Illustrious Dr, Dumas- have been furiously working on finishing Transects One and Two. This has been quite fun but exhausting. During this time, we have found a colonial brick fragment and two pieces of pottery, one was a piece of 18th-century tin-glazed, and the other a fragment of a bottle. Hopefully, I will have news as soon as I get back from today’s class.


Alright, I have good news and not bad but slightly disappointing news. We are finished with Transects one AND two. Not to mention we also found a colonial nail today. The hole we found had a very strange dirt color consistent with a midden, so we will be coming back to it and digging around it to check for other artifacts. The reason we think it was a midden (a layer of debris or trash created by human activity) was due to the dark color of the dirt. It was very dark and obviously rich with nutrients due to the large amount of foliage growing around it, but also possibly 18th-century food remains and charcoal. Towards the bottom of the shovel test hole there was a very fine layer of material similar to ash, but Dr. Dumas believes it was crushed chalk. Though we all have our doubts about this we filled the hole back in marking it so we could come back. That is the slightly disappointing news. :(



9/27

Today will be intriguing. Dr. Dumas sent out a message saying we will be water screening today. I'm kind of excited, but apprehensive about whether or not we will find anything. The last time we water screened we found nothing. Water screening, by the way, is where we put remaining shovel test dirt and break it down with water to find smaller artifacts. Normally, all dirt is sifted through screens while the hole is being dug, but soil in the Black Belt is very clayey and doesn’t easily go through a screen. I will tell you later today how it goes.

 

Water screening went great today and I happen to have several tidbits of good news again. We finished screening every sample from Transects 1 and 2. Which that alone is a fantastic thing, but we found another nail!! We also found a piece of Indian pottery which is amazing. This was a very satisfying wrap up to what we have done this far.


 

We will be going back to Transect 2 in order to look one last time at one of the shovel tests. But we will be going on to bigger and better things. What we have one this far has given us a really great appreciation for what we find as well as an amazing experience in field archaeology. I personally cannot wait to see what's next.