And I forgot to post again. Sorry guys! I get sucked into field work and then the lab work, though necessarily and useful, doesn't usually bring out interesting tidbits.
First finish up the week from the last post, we found Rippley Bullen's old excavation unit! Yay! Bullen was a former excavator who liked to write his notes at some point after he was completely done excavating, so while most trenches have been found by Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) not all have. But using an old picture and an artistic eye, we were able to find the end of one! Fortunately, it only resides in Units 1 and 2, so were able ton continue work in the remainder of Trench 1.
We also continued to find bone pins (a prestige good), and mica! Mica: it's cooler than you think! Since Mica isn't found naturally in Florida, it would have had to be a trade good. I also found a good sized piece of crystal quartz in the lab! Another trade good, probably from hundreds of miles away.
That weekend, Tropical Storm Debby paid us a visit....
Don't worry, no units under that! That is the plaza in front of Mound H with at least 10 cm of water. No work was done at the park that day, but we did do lab work and work out on Roberts Island (GPR and backfill the trench).
This was what I did in the lab though! Water screening!
On the left is after it's been screened on site. Between Debby and the water table, we've had to start water screening on site. It's so viscous it won't go through the screens.
Underneath that nice current, there's a road. And that was at 10:30 am after high tide had crested! The plan for that day was only lab work, but we lost two days of digging at the park.
Later that week while water screening at the park, one of our volunteers (a grad student at USF) found a bone hook! It's the first one ever found at Crystal River, so pretty cool!
Same day, I also found a chert biface. Not the most pretty one, but it's still cool to actually dig up the artifacts you hear and read about.
They also found a welk plummet, another prestige good, in Trench 2.
Over last weekend a number of students stayed and excavated with the professors to make up time. They found Deptford pottery, which is the earliest known occupation period of Crystal River. Deptford is found 800 BC-700 AD, but doesn't appear until Florida until around 500 BC (as far as we currently know).
We haven't found too much this week, and Trench 1 has hit the water table. Unfortunately, we may be done digging levels in the trenches. But we still have column samples to work on, so hopefully I'll get to tell you all about that!
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