Getting Down to Real Archaeology

In Delaware today, we finished mapping the features in the older part of our site and started digging them. This is the fun part. Here the crew gets two large pits cleaned up for their opening photographs, and prepares the working plan of one of them. We always take pictures of things, and make drawings of them, before we dig into them.

Cleaning up another pit for its opening photo.

 This gray circle is the large pit we found in our testing last year, purpose unknown.

 A large sherd from a red earthenware storage jar emerges from the ground.

And an as-yet mysterious iron thing. We may find out what it is when we dig out the next quadrant of the feature. Then again, we may never know.

Sorting the artifacts from one quadrant of one of those pits.