End of Week 3: The Times They Are A-Changin'

Although we faced rain-shortened days yesterday and today, progress continues. Because this is the official half-way point of the excavation, there have been a few changes made to our overall goals for the season.

Above: Updated dig map (red units are planned, green units are in progress, and blue units are finished)

For starters, we've decided to open up a unit in the western yard of the property to provide a 'control' unit of sorts. We're interested in what lies beneath the raised mound of sand next to driveway, but since we can't actually dig under it, we'll move west into the yard area. We've also opened up a unit between a finished driveway test pit and the planned yard unit. This pit straddles the base of the raised mound and the yard; we hope to document the transition between these two components of the property (see the photo below).

Above: In the foreground, volunteer archaeologists Maggie, Cory, and Andrew work on the test pit at straddling the base of the driveway mound. In the background, volunteer archaeologist Josh works on the last driveway test pit. (In case you can't tell, the Fairbanks House [c. 1641] is the one on the left and the curator's house [c. 1912] is on the right).

We also plan on expanding the subterranean feature two-fold by placing 3 1x1m units to the west of the existing units. Hopefully this will give us a clearer picture of the feature's characteristics.

Lastly, we will move to the area north of the Fairbanks House where our ground-penetrating radar survey revealed a possible buried living surface. We will place two units in this area with the purpose of exposing this potential feature and providing crucial information for planning the future stages of excavation at the Fairbanks House property.

As forecasts turn a bit drier and we introduce a new set of volunteer archaeologists, check back next week for more updates from the dig...

Left: volunteer archaeologist Alex excavates the third unit of our subterranean feature.