By Jennifer Futch

Yesterday was exciting for a while in our excavation unit; at 50 cm we discovered what seemed to be a feature in the northeast corner and an area in the southwest corner. However, they each disappeared after only a few centimeters of digging. Looking at our walls we can see that uneven stratigraphy caused our false feature and area. We are still wondering why we have not found a feature yet when our unit is so full of pottery and daub. Today Evan and I brought the unit down to 65 cm with no features still. Again, there were a lot of pot sherds and daub but no features. It’s interesting that we still have not hit sterile soil, or soil without artifact or human disturbance, at such a deep level. I can tell we are getting better at excavating; we are digging our levels much faster and easier every day.

Tomorrow we will all be cleaning up and preparing for our public day on Saturday. We’ll all be very busy getting ready! My station will be the “Artifact Lab” where I’ll be cleaning artifacts and teaching the public about what happens after artifacts are excavated. Hopefully we’ll have a good turn out.