JUNE 19, 2004

From: Scott Beld
Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004
To: Oxbow Archaeologists
Subject: Ponton Site - June 19, 2004

Hi Oxbow Archaeologists,

We made it out to the site yesterday and had a good day excavating – perfect weather. John O., Francis, Greg, and I made it out with a visit from John and Brenda K (see Photo 1 and 2 in the photo gallery below).

To start the day I photographed and drew the profiles between Sec. 1 & 2 and 2 & 3 (see Photo 3 and 4 in the photo gallery). We defined three zones of fill in the feature. Zone 1 = an upper layer of mottled brown and yellow sand fill at the top of the feature. Zone 2 = a middle layer of orange gravelly sand in the center of the feature. And Zone 3 = a dark gray brown sand fill at the bottom of the feature.

After the profiles were drawn, John and Francis began excavating Section 2. One of the few finds in level 1 was a grit tempered pottery (Late Woodland) sherd – we have been finding quiet a few flakes throughout the fill but this was one of the first sherds.

In Level 2, John and Francis found “the artifact of the week” – a ground glass bottle stopper (see Photo 5 in the photo gallery) -- as well as an Old Blue Transfer sherd, a pin and a pipe bowl fragment.

Greg and I excavated Level 3 in the afternoon. This level contained several large bricks, a plain white dish fragment (possibly from a Blue Edge plate) and a pipe stem fragment. The most interesting artifact from this level was a plain (no writing or design) pierced brass disk (see Photo 6 and 7 in the photo gallery, shown in situ in Photo 8).

In Level 4, Greg and I found very little but there was a brass pin (see Photo 9).

Greg also excavated part of unit 520R498 and recovered Red Transfer and Blue Edge sherds (see Photo 10).

Also, I began to prepare Feature 5 – the large “mess” of a feature north of Feature 4 – for excavation. Part of this feature is under some backdirt.

Last Wednesday, we got the flotation tank out and began processing samples from this feature. They go much quicker than those from Cater and 20MD534. The sediment is fine sand that breaks up easier than the silt from Cater/20MD534, yet the grain size is small enough so it doesn’t get stuck in the screen! Two things we’ve noticed on the site seemed to also hold for the flotation samples. Most of the pins seem to be coming from the west end of the feature (Section 3 and the west part of Section 2). I didn’t notice any pins in the Section 1 samples but did notice two in the Section 3 sample (most of the samples I did on Wednesday were from Section 1). Also, while there isn’t a lot of bone in the feature, a lot of what there is seems to be fish bone (ribs, scales, etc.), though there is the occasional small mammal bone.

On Wednesday we’ll plan on lab work at the RB and next Saturday we’ll plan on excavating at the Ponton site as usual.

Hope to see you at the site.

Scott

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Scott G. Beld, Ph.D.
Research Associate II
The University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology
1109 Geddes Road
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1079
Phone: 734-764-0489 (UMMP Main Office)
734-763-9253 (My Office)
Fax: 734-936-1380
Email: sbeld@umich.edu
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