Day 12: Can You Dig It?

This morning was dewy fresh with a hint of sunlight to brighten up the darkest greens, and the soil was moist making it easy to collect for those students still excavating. Sonya, Andrea, Sean, Verena, and Spencer continued on with the digging, finding, and documenting, later to be joined again by Rikki after she finished collecting her soil samples for the day. In this hearty group, Sonya dug until the soil in her unit was sterile (Ie: no more artifacts to be found in it) before she could move on to another unit. Andrea continued to make some interesting recoveries including two batteries (one of which said "Mazda" on it), and a cigarette box with a label on it (seen below).


During lunch the field school was once again greeted by smiling visitors! Lucky! (See the paparazzi picture below). Our distinguished guests included instructors and graduates from Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. Dr. Doug Ross lectures at UBC, and SFU. Two of our visitoris, Rich Hutchings and Marina La Salle, are working on their Ph.D's at UBC. Ian Sellers, Jon Sheppard, and Craig Rust also joined us and they are graduate students in Archaeology at SFU.


After lunch Andy, Bora, Suzannah, and Brittany ventured off into the west slope once again (pictured below).

Bora was continuing his surveying, and his assistant was Brittany. Today on the hillside embedded in round and new-ish logs Bora and Brittay found two nails that looked young relative to the ones on the hillside cabin. Suzannah and Andy left their cabin area in order to help Bora and Brittany for a few moments to use the trusty (and not rusty) metal detector to see if there were any other nails in the immediate area, but none were found. Suzzanah is the metal detecting maniac (pictured below).

Another strange thing in the area where the nails were found is the short tree stump found in the picture below, with the board notch cut into it. These sorts of notches were typically cut in large tree stumps about 6 feet high, in order to make the cutting of the tree easier for loggers. This group of four were left wondering why such a small stump would have a notch cut into it when this particular tree could have easily been cut without one. If it wasn't a board notch, what was it for?


Simon and Max were taking a day off from Max's project of investigating the mystery chair, and instead were focusing on Simon's project of determining the minimum number of bottles found on the McKenzie Creek site. Simon says that the minimum number of bottles is determined by counting the bottle necks. Since there are so many glass fragments found throughout the site, counting the unique neck shape should make it easier. These two are pictured below (but they wouldn't do a funny pose).


Perhaps you will find this interesting: The picture below is of the warped glass piece that Paul found near his wooden planks. What could have misshaped this glass so much? Fire? Lightening?


After today, it seems as if more questions were asked in the field school than were answered. Some might find this frustrating, but not these students! This troop is encouraged to learn through questioning :)