Breaking Ground

May 7th we started on the trench at the east end of the site. This was really exciting for me as I have not excavated a trench yet and it was a completely new experience that I couldn't wait to start. By mid morning my crew had located what we thought was the best possible location to start the trench according to some of the surface artifacts that had been located the previous week. We chose a spot in which one of the very few pieces of obsidian has been found so we were hoping to find a number worked pieces below the surface.

The 5x1 trench was started with a point at the SW corner. To find the NW point, we measured 1 meter 30degrees West of North and then staked out the remaining SE and NE corners. There was some difficulty leveling the line due to the slope of the trench but we made due.

It was time to break ground! We were able to complete the first level (0-10cm) and dry screen everything before the end of the day. I was thrilled to find once small piece of worked obsidian along with other things such as seashells, a bead, ceramic and porcelain shards, glass, mortar, modified rocks, nails, screws, brick and a large amount of bone fragments (non-human).

It will be interesting to see what we find in the next level as I am sure that there are more bones to come.