Strawtown - Part 2

The second weekend at Strawtown was certainly as enjoyable as the first. Got there a little later on Friday than originally intended but that worked out okay. Still got in a little time then before wrapping it up for the night. And there was still all day Saturday to play with.

The thrust of my work for Saturday involved the 2 rows of holes you see in the photo below.

Those are post holes; many of which were first uncovered during the previous dig season. We are assuming that these represent the wall of a structure and were hoping to find the point at which the wall terminated and/or turned. We didn’t actually get the answer to that question. One row seems to have ended just out of sight at the bottom of the picture but the other continues on without end. Both rows also continue indefinitely to the south (toward the top of the photo) as is represented by the colored pins which you can kind of make out heading off in a line upward. As this was the last weekend of the dig for this year, those will have to wait for further investigation until next year. My guess, based on minimal information, is that what we are seeing there may actually be more of a compound enclosure wall rather than a structure. If it is a structure, it is a LARGE structure.

And, of course, others were carrying out other investigations and activities.

Here, Scott is excavating a relatively deep feature that, I believe, he suspects is an intrusive Oneota storage pit.

And in this photo, Colin is trenching and dressing up the southern wall in preparation for drawing the wall profile. Profiling is something I talked a bit about during the field school discussion. This is the task where the differing soil levels are drawn / mapped for future evaluation.

So what did we find while we were there. Quite a lot! We recovered a great deal of pottery, lithic (stone) materials, and animal bone. All of these need cleaning and cataloguing yet before we can fully grasp the extent of our findings. Still, here are a few of the more notable artifacts uncovered.

This is an incredibly well-preserved elk antler.

Here is a talon from an, as yet unidentified, bird-of-prey.

And this is a rather unexpected find. This spear point actually pre-dates the rest of the site by 6-8000 years. A long-held family heirloom maybe? Dunno!

And that is really all I’m going to say about the time spent at Strawtown. As usual time is pressing so need to move on. If ya want to know more, catch me in person sometime, somehow. ;-)

Well, okay, one last pic or three. Yes, we did get in some recreational fun-time again Friday evening. That night’s activity was target shooting with the bow & arrow.

In order, this is Adrienne, Sharon, and Shelby taking their crack at it …

And, of course, yours truly had to play as well ...