Progress from N8 W10

Hi, 

My name is Ariel Armstrong and I am a student at Western Michigan University. I have always been very passionate about Anthropology. Recently I have found a fascination for public archaeology. I am currently a student at the Western Michigan University Archaeological Field School hosted at Fort St. Joseph. 

Working on this archaeological site has already taught me so much and changed me for the better! This year, we were each assigned units at different levels. My Unit is N8 W10, which had not been previously excavated unlike others on site. During the first week of field school my unit partner and I began excavating for the first time. We shovel skimmed the grass/topsoil and we began to trowel/shovel to reach 15 cm bd (centimeters below datum). We didn’t collect items found in the topsoil or wetscreen it because there was a lot of modern trash in our dirt. 

However, when we reached 17 cm bd, we began to wetscreen our soil because we were starting to find small pieces of animal bone. In my particular unit, there was a tree root running from the North wall to the South wall in the East half of the unit and was 6 cm in diameter. We carefully troweled around it, until an accident occurred and led to the root to being stepped on and removed (sawed) from our unit. The root did obstruct some of our excavation, so we were then able to fix the walls where the root used to be. The last few days of excavation have been very productive and insightful. Dr. Micheal Nassaney, the previous site director, has been visiting the site once or twice a week and helping us. Last week, he helped my partner and I close the first level at 20 cm bd. We had begun to see modeling from the plow zone soil layer in the unit, and we were finding more artifacts in the wetscreen like slag, bone, modern glass and modern garbage. We completed a plan view of our unit, took notes of all the artifacts, and used the Munsell to identify the colors present in the soil so that we were ready to close the level. Now my partner and I are on level 2 working on getting the East half of our unit down to 25 CMBD. On the west half of the unit, I began to reveal two larger structural stones in the southeast corner. One might be covered in mortar but only time and patience will tell!

Ariel