Roots, Snakes, and Charcoal

Another day where everybody showed up on time at 6:00 am, more or less ready to leave. Again, we received our assignments before departing and set out without much incident (aside from Bryce, who locked his keys in his trunk). The drive to the site was much smoother than before, as the survey truck didn't almost hit a deer on the road to the site, unlike every other day so far.

Upon arrival, everybody gathered their tools, drank some water (hopefully), and headed to the site. Here, we started where we left off hurriedly the day before. We mapped out one unit, began digging the first level of another, and opened up yet another off in the woods. The other teams continued troweling the floors of their units so they could map them out by the day's end.

On the way to open up the unit where we recovered and Archaic point in the forest we saw, well, another snake. Luckily, Kevin was there with his snake hook to relocate it to another area of the site.

Sneaky Snake

As the day moved on, several interesting finds showed up. One unit discovered a spread of burnt timber along their floor adjacent to some flat rocks. This helps illustrate that the residents here may have had their house burnt down after its use had been exhausted.

Once the copperhead was moved away, a number of artifacts were recovered from the unit off in the woods, although none of them were Archaic, including the chalcedony point below, which was recovered along with numerous decorated Caddo sherds.

After a long day, we ended up with some satisfying results and headed back to camp. Also, yes, Bryce ended up getting his keys out of his car.

Bryce Denton, Sarah Dumas, Meghan Hemric, Richard Jaggers

PS: Group E will miss you!