Blog Entry: Week 1 (May 9^th-16^th) By Quinn Kissane, Karin Williams, and Bianaca Brammer

     We made it to the Angel Mounds site this past week and have already gotten dirty! We all got to meet our professor and supervisors (if we did not already know them), Dr. Jeremy Wilson, Dr. Bill Monaghan, Erica Ausel, and Tony Krus. We were given a summary of the history of the Angel Mounds site, the work that has been done here, and what work we will be doing. We received our field journals, a line level, and our trowels—tools of the trade for archaeologists!

Left: The south wall of the trench taken out in the area already excavated by Glenn A. Black.

Right: Preparing to cover the trench for the night.

We began by clean scraping the trench from the previous summer for a fresh view of the soil, and learned more about what archaeologists look for when digging and the methodology to beginning our work on this year’s unit (12-E). Within the first couple of days, we became accustomed to using our trowels and clean scraping the walls to look for features (artifacts that cannot be removes from sites, ex. fire pits) in the stratigraphy. Dr. Monaghan showed us how to differentiate between soil types, all consisting of clay, silt, and/or sand, and how to label the soil colors with a Munsell book. We had no idea how many different types of soil there are! As an archaeologist, it is important to know the differences in the soils and their textures because that is what we use to interpret different types of activities.  For example, a storage pit will contain a different type of soil then a fire pit. We were then divided into two groups: one for repairing the water screens used to separate artifacts from buckets of soil dug from the units and building drying racks screens to dry them and the second for scraping the north wall of the trench. The north wall of the trench is the area we will be excavating our units this summer.

Dr. Jeremy Wilson showing student

Hannah Bose how to measure the 1x1 units

     Once the north wall was completely scraped, we shoveled all the sand and back fill from previous excavations off of the designated areas for our units and clean scraped the 2- by 6-meter area. We were then paired off to either work on a 1 by 1 square meter area, called 1x1s (said one-by-ones), within the larger unit 12-E, or to learn how to do water screening. Each group worked in their 1x1s and began by removing the plow zone soil and artifacts. We made LOTS of field specimen cards and labels! These are used to identify everything we take out of the ground. To know where we were starting in space we all measured the elevation in the corners of our 1x1s from the datum—the datum is a designated point with known x, y, and z coordinates from which all measurements during this summer’s excavations are made from.

We had to be careful with our shovels to not harm any artifacts or to dig too deep. Once we had cleared away the top of the plow zone, because the Angel site use to be an agricultural field, we flattened it using our trowels and clean scraped it for photographs and mapping. The soil in our unit was a silty clay loam, a soil type which is very common in areas along rivers. The color was 10YR ¾ and the mottling (meaning the inclusion of small areas of a different soil type) was 10YR 6/8 (this is the non-primary soil color). As this was happening, buckets containing plow zone soil were taken to the water screening and all of the soil was filtered out using a screen and a water hose. Each 1x1s buckets were placed in separate screens to dry in order to keep artifacts together and retain their context. Some interesting artifacts we found included negative painted pottery, many animal bones, charcoal, and even a small lithic! We look forward to continuing our excavation and hope to gain insight into the Angel Mounds site and Mississippian period.

Digging the plow zone.  The 1x1 square meter, which the 2 by 6 meter unit 12-E is divided into, can easily been seen.

Here are some additional images of our first week taken by our water screen instructor Jasmine McClure.  Thanks Jasmine!

Instructors Jeremy Wilson and Erica Ausel discussing the south wall of the trench which

exposes Black's 1939-1942 excavations.

Our carpenters Autumn and Arron Williamson thankfully fixing the waters creens and

artifact drying racks.

Students clean scraping the south wall of the trench in order to expose a clean

surface to view features.

Instructors Tony Krus and Jeremy Wilson laying out the unit 12-E which

is 2 meters by 6 meters in area.  Student Gary Macadaeg and visiting graduate

student Matt Pike look on.

Students learning about the different stratigraphic layers they will

be encountering

Students clean scraping after the first level, the plow zone, has been taken off.

With the shade tents finally up the students are mapping their first 1x1s.

THis is a view of unit 12-E facing east.  Three 1x1s can be seen on the north (right)

side of the unit.  They have excavated the plow zone to expose the top of

an ancient midden (or layer of discarded items).  The other 1x1s are covered

by carpet padding to keep them moist.

Jeremy Wilson discussing possible features in this level.

Instructor Tony Krus giving a lecture about chronology and the Angel palisade.

A view of the water screening area.  Students Jason Hines and Autumn

Williamson are seen here.

More water screening!  About ten 5 gallon buckets of soil come from each level of each

1x1.  With 12 1x1s total, and about 7 to 8 levels each, that makes for a lot of screening!

The water screeners, shade tents up, prepare for the Angel Mounds Historic Site's

Archaeological C.S.I. (Cultural Scene Investigation) day.  Over 600 middle school

students visited 11 different stations across the Angel site to learn about

archaeology.  How cool!

Quinn Kissane working hard at the water screen.

Student Marsha Ratliff and visiting husband water screening and

finding intersting artifacts.  

Student karin WIlliams water screening.  Notice at this point all the dirt has been

washed away leaving only artifacgs behind. 

Instructor Jeremy WIlson and Matt Pike finding lumbar which will be used to

cover up the excavations each night.

Jeremy Wilson teaching C.S.I. day visitors about the current excavations.

More visiting middle schoolers from C.S.I. day ispecting the water screening

operation.

Visiting GBL graduate student Ed Herrmann teaching Hannah Bose

how to throw an atlatl, a prehistoric spear throwing device.