By Mercedes Harrold

The days of the field school are winding down and we are trying to carefully finish up the units open and study the artifacts left in our buckets of dirt. Today I was FS Tsarina once again and spent my day in the water screening area and although not as hot as it was yesterday, the water screening is a nice respite from digging.

Today was fairly interesting. Rain was forecasted (not abnormal in our Florida summers), but no rain came, although early on the overcast skies were starting to make us wonder. We were able to have a successful day digging and screening. Paul and Erin continued on their feature and interestingly enough the colors of their unit became inverted by the end of the day…their orange clay feature had turned to a darker, mottled gray brown and orange color of soil, while their dark areas surrounding the feature turned a strong brown color (see below). A possible post hole may have been found in their unit too. So, they plan to excavate only half of the post hole, taking it down 10 centimeters. By excavating half of the feature we get a profile of the features shape. Since the posthole is so small, the spoons will be broken out tomorrow for that extra special digging.

Tomorrow is going to be a very productive day starting with our final quiz. I’ve been told that the most exciting archaeological finds always occur on the last few days. We will see if the blessing (or the curse) of a new find will happen within the next few days.