JULY 17, 2004

Hi Oxbow Archaeologists,

We made it out to the site yesterday and had a good day excavating. The day started out cloudy and threatening to rain but turned out nice and sunny. We even had a couple visitors at lunch (see Photo 1 and Photo 2 in the photo gallery below). Marianne, John O., Frances, Elisabeth, Henry Wright, and I made it out and we worked on Feature 5 all day (see Photo 3 and Photo 4).

Feature 5, 516R498. In the morning, Marianne worked on the corner of Fea. 5 in this unit and excavated it to Level 3 (40 cm below the surface). One square nail was found.

Feature 5, 516R496. John worked on this section in the morning and I worked on it in the afternoon. By the end of the day I had taken the section down to 75 cm. There is still a trace in one corner but that should be gone by 80 cm. We recovered nothing from this section yesterday. In the profile I can see were Feature 5 divides into two features, an east and west half -- hopefully more on this next week!

Feature 5, 517R495. Frances worked on this section in the morning and I finished it in the afternoon. It extended to 55 cm. Nothing was recovered from this section yesterday.

Feature 5, 516R493. Elisabeth and Henry began this section. This part of the "feature" seems to be developing into two square postmolds (see Photo 5 -- I'll put a couple more pictures of stages of excavation on the web page -- see Photo 6 and Photo 7) and is seperated from the rest of Feature 5. These two postmolds also contained all of the artifacts we found yesterday (with the exception Marianne's square nail). There was a small shell button (see Photo 8), a bone fragment with three chop marks (see Photo 9), and half of a pipe bowl (see Photo 10 -- "Artifact of the Week"). There was a small Brown and a small Red Transfer sherd (I'll put the pictures of them on the web page -- see Photo 11).

Wednesday we'll plan on lab work -- flotation, washing artifacts and 1/8" screen samples. Next Saturday we'll plan on excavating.

Hope to see you at the site.

Scott