Monday, June 4, 2007



By Samantha Schlazer



Today, we started off with a few sun showers. We thought it was going to continue to rain and we would have to go inside, but it let up real quickly. Mercedes, Juan, and I are working on the same unit as Friday, over on the east side of the parking lot. We are not really finding that many artifacts, but I found one large piece of pottery this morning. I was sick today, so I was trying to take it easy. Juan carried all the buckets and did a lot of the screening for our unit; he said that they found some aluminum fragments from an old toothpaste tube which indicates our unit is slightly disturbed. Mercedes and I noted lots of charcoal flecks throughout our unit. We were very excited this afternoon when Paul came over with his chainsaw and removed two large roots from our unit.

Regarding other units, Paul and Erin found a really cool feature in their unit, so it will be exciting to see what they uncover. Already this unit has generated small pieces of iron which may be fragments of early Spanish chain mail (pictured left). Examples were sent to the conservation lab to be assessed by the Bureau’s conservator.

All in all work is going really well. Everyone seems to be getting along well and pitching in to complete the tasks assigned. I hope we are able to get to all six or seven of the potential excavation units by the end of the field school.