Field School - Week 5

Lots of things happened this week. We wrapped up excavations at one block and opened up 3 new ones. And several noteworthy finds were made throughout the enclosure.

For today I'm just going to talk about the block where I spent most of the week working and a little bit about a couple of the finds. The rest is going to have to wait a bit. It looks like I'll be posting about Field School for a while yet, even after its over. There are many points I haven't even touched on yet that warrant comment.

My focus for the week was on Block 3 which is the excavation being conducted across the northern edge of the embankment. The primary goal there was to determine the location and depth of the ditch. I don't have any earlier photos of this excavation so will start with this one taken at the end of the day on Monday. The digging is nearly complete at this point.

This shot is looking into the trench from the northern end. We have dug to just below the ditch on this end but still need to uncover the other side. The smaller trenches at the sides were dug so we could get a better look at the soil layers along the walls.

Heres a photo with Loren standing in the ditch so you can get a better idea of its depth.

As I'd mentioned before, the biggest thing we are looking for here is soil differentiation. Sometimes these differences stand out clearly; others are more ambiguous. Heres a shot of the northern wall of the trench.

Here the layers are quite distinct. The darker, upper layer is much higher in organic content. This is the plow zone; the depth to which farming during previous decades has impacted on the soil. The yellower soil beneath was unaffected by cultivation and is more sterile. We looked for similar differences to mark where the ditch itself could be found.

This is a view of the eastern wall.

Hopefully you can make out 3 different layers in this photo. There is a yellowish layer of relatively sterile soil that parallels the bottom of the trench. The upper boundary of this zone marks the base of the ditch. Directly above it is a triangular zone of dark soil. This is soil that was deposited through erosion prior to the period of cultivation. The grayish, upper soil equates to the plow zone.

These are the predominant zones. There are actually several others which can't be made out in this photo. All these zones were drawn onto a profile map and their characteristics were documented. This can be a relatively time-consuming process. Each of the 4 walls gets recorded separately. We spent more hours taking profiles of the trench this week than we did digging.

By the end of Thursday, all work for this block had been completed. Here is the end result.

The last task to be completed, once excavation and profiling was done, was to extract flotation samples. These were taken from where you see the 6 notches in the eastern wall (well, actually you only see 5. One is hidden behind the tree in the foreground.) with 2 additional samples coming from mid-way down the wall.

Flotation samples go through a different screening process than what we've been doing out in the field. It involves water and a much finer meshed screen. What we'll be looking for through flotation screening is botanical remains; plant seeds and pollen. These are indicators of environmental changes. They can also be used to document the emergence, development, and usage of domesticated plants.

And that is really all I have to say about this part of the excavation at this point. Any questions?

And now, off on a different tangent...

One of the things I haven't talked about yet is the artifacts we've found. Given discoveries made this week, its a good time for a quick peek at some of them. It seems that arrowheads are typically the first things that people ask about so we'll start there.

During the time period in which this enclosure was most recently inhabited, people were using what is called the Madison Point. These are true arrowheads. Many projectile points are commonly referred to as arrowheads but they are actually spear points which date to earlier times. The invention of the bow and arrow in North America is a relatively recent development; occuring around 800AD.

Madison Points are found throughout the central and eastern United States with little variation in style. They are small and triangular in shape. We have come across several made of chert (a type of flint). Most of them are in good condition. I don't have photos of those now in our collection (my camera doesn't take good close-ups) but this will give you an idea of how they look.

(http://www.uwlax.edu/MVAC/PointGuide/madison.htm)

However, this week we also found a couple of projectile points, at opposite sides of the enclosure, that date to a much earlier time period. I haven't seen the second one found yet, but the first one is comparable to the point in the center of this image.

(http://www.cmnh.org/site/ResearchandCollections/Archaeology/Research/GeneralAudienceNontechnicall/HistoryNEOhio.aspx)

This is an Early Archaic Point which would have been in use around 6000-8000 years ago. It is considerably larger than the Madison Points. The notches in the side allow for it to be hafted and tied to a spear shaft.

Why these Early Archaic points are present, or how they got there, is a matter of speculation. Their presence does not necessarily mean that the site was being inhabited by Early Archaic peoples. We have no evidence of earlier habitation here. It could well be the case that they had simply been found and used by later people. Or, given that they were also made of chert, they may have been collected in order to be recycled into Madison Points. Alternatively, they may have been found and passed on as family hierlooms. This may well be a question that goes unanswered.

And thats all for now!