Finally Digging at the Fort Site!

Today was the day that we have all been waiting for; we finally broke ground at the fort site!  In the morning we were working on opening up past units until we got down to tarps that covered them from previous excavations. 

Uncovering previous units

Were reopening features ten and fourteen which contained fireplace features from previous years so we can attempt to locate walls of an eighteenth century building. After this tedious process we were allowed to open up our brand new 2 by 1 meter unit. Mostly everyone seemed to get a pretty good unit, well everyone except for mine and Calvin’s unit. Calvin and I got blessed with the privilege of having a nice tree directly on the south wall of our unit that is producing some awesome roots that we just love digging around and through. As one can imagine these roots are severely holding up the excavation process for my pit partner and I. In my unit specifically we are probably around six or seven centimeters at the most, in the rest of the units most people are at 25 centimeters down or more. Already some artifacts are being found in some units which is pretty exciting for everyone on the site. We found the most artifacts at the end of the day when we had our first lesson on wet screening. Found in the wet screen was one musket ball, multiple seed beads and lead shot, and countless animal bones.  

Wet screening demo

Our amazing dinner!

Now I understand why they recommend wearing flip flops while wet screening, after I was finished my shoes and legs were soaked. But it was very refreshing after being in the hot sun all day. Even though it was a great feeling starting at the fort site today, for me the highlight of the day was the food that the Layman family had made for us. If I could cook as well as Stephanie Layman does I would be about ten thousand pounds by now. I would like to formally thank Stephanie and anyone who helped with dinner tonight, it was fabulous as always.  Tonight I will go to bed dreaming of the meatballs from dinner and then musket balls from the site.

Force feeding michelle

-Ashley