May 21st 2019 - We're Back!

After a nice long weekend, we're back working in the field. In the morning we split into three groups to start planning out where our test pits were going to be, and measured out different grids around the site. One group worked on the west side of the paved road, while the other two worked on the east side of the path. My group created a grid which was 20 meters North/South by 35 meters East/West, placing a marker every five meters.

Students measuring out a grid system to create test pits at the McKenzie Creek site.

We also had our first visitors come to the site this morning which was super cool! Our guests included Christina Crane Finlay, Shane Finlay and Steph Halmhofer. Christina works at the National Trust in the United Kingdom and studies many important sites such as Stonehenge. Her husband Shane has a degree in cultural anthropology, but we forgave him for that and let him help excavate anyways. Steph is a bioarchaeologist who has a masters degree from the University of Toronto and you can check her out on twitter here!

From left to right: Christina, Shane, Steph. 

Bob gave our guests a tour of the McKenzie Creek site and showed them some artifacts that had been found in previous years.

A few artifacts found by previous field school students including a large bottle, a few smaller bottles, some ponds cold cream containers and some bowls. 

After lunch, we split up into a few more groups to continue test excavations around the site, and two students also started working on their projects. Mitch and Alyssa started planning out their sketches of the rock structure and ofuro, and also started to remove moss from those features. Rohan helped Mitch with some measurements and planning at the stone feature, while Alyssa and I worked on the ofuro. Before disturbing the features, we both got our site photographer Nikki to take detailed pictures of them, and we sketched them in our field notebooks. By the time Alyssa and I started clearing the moss off of the rocks making up the ofuro structure, everyone was packing up to leave for the day! Time goes by so fast and I wish I could have stayed longer to uncover the ofuro!

A single rock on the ofuro with the moss scraped off, many still covered around it. 

Luckily we will be back at the site tomorrow to continue with our test pits, and even start excavating! Soon everybody will be working on their projects and hopefully discovering many interesting things about the site. See you tomorrow!