June 21, 2017

Beginning Unit D

Unit C is totally closed and now serving as a place to screen into for unit B and now unit D is now officially being excavated.

Our first level was originally going to be a 20 cm level but, after we began uncovering what seemed to be the first course of a stone wall, Dr Goldstein had us continue down another 10 cm (making that first level 30 cm total) so it took a bit of time but the level is finally there. Today Josh from the field crew and Jerica were cleaning the walls and floors of the bottom of the level while I screened the dirt they were removing, cut roots, and generally tried to help them out without being in their way (an about 2×2 meter square is kind of small for 3 people to begin with but once you throw a ~50 cm wall into the mix as well, it’s not really do-able).

A view of the wall in unit A and the one in unit D when the latter was being uncovered on Friday. (Image courtesy of MSU Campus Archaeology Twitter)

We’ve also cut the unit wall on the eastern side back until we found the other side of the wall in unit A (only about 3.5 cm outside of our unit). With more of the wall exposed on our side, the wall in unit A seems to run straight and then turn a corner into our unit but we can’t tell yet if it turns there or if the wall in D is just another wall off of A’s initial wall and the wall in A simply has an opening in it for some reason we cannot yet determine.

Helpful picture showing the way the walls in A and D seem to connect (also from Friday, it’s much more distinct now) Image courtesy of the MSU Campus Archaeology Instagram

We’ve even found a few things in this unit already. Nothing major but after the last three levels of C having nothing but a nail or two even the bottom of one bottle and the mouth of another, a penny (year unknown until we can get it to the lab and clean it off a bit), a piece of terracotta, and, of course, the ever ubiquitous nails seem pretty exciting.

We’re still not sure which side(s) of the walls would have been inside of the building and which were outside. To figure that out we need to determine if the walls we’ve found are foundation or interior walls. While the walls are very thick like foundation walls are, we can’t say for sure which it is just yet.

We’ve even added another unit to the site. Unit E is between units A and B and is being excavated by field crew member Becca (with the help of Susan Kooiman today). If we’re listing miscellaneous things from the whole site, Unit B has their own wall (or wall-like thing) now too. It might be a lintel or sidewalk of some kind but it’s too soon to tell what it might be.

Author: Alex