Hello everyone!
I apologize for taking so long to get this weeks posting up, I have been very busy with everything. We had a great week out in the field and were very fortunate to get some rain this past weekend.
This past Saturday we were happy to host family day for Historic Columbia Foundation. Several kids and adults came out to learn about real archaeology in action and get dirty. The event was featured on the front of the metro section in Sunday's edition of The State Newspaper. You can view the article at http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=121774C4907155D8&p_docnum=1
The rain was GREAT for loosening up some of the soils in the units. I was able to trowel down through the red layer, which was very thick, in square 4. I got the same amount of dirt moved in two hours that I had in three days before the rain. It was wonderful!! What I came down on was similar to what we found in square 2, a line down the middle seperating two differently disturbed layers. I will have pictures on the next posting after I have a chance to clean it up for pictures.
We finally reached sub-soil in units 1 and 5, this is a sterile red clay. When I say sub-soil I mean a layer where there has been no human activity. These units are in the process of being cleaned up, photographed, and thier profiles mapped. I plan on backfilling them at the beginning of next week.
We are anxiously awaiting the gradiometer, that has been ordered from England, to continue the geophysical survey in another area of the yard. Hopefully that will come in before we finish up the rest of the units, so we won't have to proceed without doing the geophysical part of the survey. However, if it looks as if this will occur, we will move to a part of the yard we expect to see heavy disturbance from building deconstruction. If the geophysical equiptment does come in we will move to the front of the house next to spice things up a bit.
Someone requested more pictures of the GPR in progress, so I have uplaoded them above. See ya next week!
Helena Ferguson
Primary Investigator
