Student Hightlight! David Hodo

David retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1996 and the Little Rock, Arkansas Police Department in 1999. From 1999 until 2000, David visited and studied archaeology sites and institutions in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Europe. He became an online and on-campus student in the UWF Maritime Studies Program in August 2008. Last summer, David excavated in Bylazora, Macedonia with the Texas Foundation for Archaeology and Historical Research. He is currently in UWF Combined Maritime and Terrestrial Field Schools.

Student Highlight! Thomas Kirkland

Kirk left Auburn University School of Business in his sophomore year. He earned his six pack captain's license in 2006. He worked in the parasail industry in Panama City Beach as a captain until 2009. Kirk began attending University of West Florida in the fall of 2009 for a bachelors degree in Maritime Studies. He would like to go to graduate school at UWF for a masters in Historical Anthropology. After graduating Kirk would like to get a job with a government agency doing some sort of archaeological or coastal zone management job.

Like sand though the shaker screens, these are the days of our lives

Things have truly kicked into high gear on the site! We're down to six open units and a ton of dirt yet to move!

In our block (left), a number of complicated brick features in Units 3 and 12 have been recorded and removed at long last. This means that digging should proceed much more smoothly.

Also this week we said good-bye to the large metal plate that spanned the southern corners of Units 3 and 12. Unfortunately, after being exposed on and off for two field seasons, the plate's integrity did not hold. We managed to salvage and transport the pieces as intact as possible.

This, of course, did not mean that the archaeological fun stopped once the brick and metal plate were gone. Along the east wall of Unit 12 Salina Hebert and Melissa Timo discovered yet another sandstone block. This smaller block is at a different elevation than the others discovered. Does this mean that it's from another building? Another, later floor support? A victim of the building(s)'s destruction? Only time and future work will tell.

In the trench south of Block 1 (above, right), Kad Henderson and his students have reached the bottom of the tree fall disturbance. They now finding intact deposits that have produced a number of interesting artifacts, including writing slate pieces and our ninth pipebowl (below, left).

Unfortunately, our time is nearly up. Next week is our last week, and it will be filled with all those things that need to happen to put a site "to bed," so to speak. These will include extensive mapping and end of excavation photographs, inventorying and returning equipment, and backfilling the nearly 18 cubic meters (nearly 60 cubic feet!) of dirt we removed and screened this year into the excavated units to protect them until the next field season.

Stay tuned for the frenzy!

Student Highlight! Shane McDonald

Shane is majoring in Anthropology with a specialization in Archaeology. He graduated from Wewahitchka High in 2006. Although he has lived all over the US due to being from a military family, Wewa is where home is. Fall 2010 begins his senior year at UWF, and his future aspirations are high. Vote for him as presidential candidate in 2024!

Picking up the pace

As we headed into this past week, it was with the knowledge that time is slipping away! We still have a lot to finish before the end.

In Unit 12, student Salina Hebert and director in training Melissa Timo excavated a proposed dripline. The trench-like feature only contained larger-sized objects like whole oyster shell, bowl bases, free-blown bottle base (right), and this large fragment of a plate with a printed pattern Salina is modelling (left). If this feature is in fact a dripline, these artifact make sense. Water passing through the dripline wouldn't be able to wash away such heavy artifacts.

In other news, we've finished another unit! In order to deem a unit "finished," archaeologists must determine that they have reached the end of cultural deposits. To be sure, UWF archaeologists will excavate two more 10 cm levels down. Eariler Euro-American, or even Native American, deposits can sometimes lie beneath predicted cultural remains, unbeknownst to even the most well-researched archaeologist!

Because the construction or occupation midden features ran deep in Unit 6, excavators couldn't call it quits for a full meter (3.3 feet)! Below is a picture of Tara Giuliano, supervisor of the students working in Unit 6. At 5'2," Tara had to improve her vertical jump just to get out!

Finally, on Thursday we completed our last bit of geophysical survey. This time Sarah Mitchell was back with the ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment. Unlike x-ray, the GPR sends radar a meter into the ground, which reflects back and reveals disturbances underground. In addition to archaeologists, this machinery is commonly used by utilities workers. See the video below for how a GPR runs. The machine must be kept level and flat on the ground, which was difficult to do with the ruts and stumps on the site.

Student Highlight! Meagan Rea

Meagan Rea is a Senior in the Archaeology department at the University of West Florida. She is interested in historical archaeology with a focus in African American archaeology. She is hoping to continue on the graduate school and eventually completing her Doctorate.

Student Highlight! Jeanette Scadlock

Jeanette is a senior at the University of Central Florida majoring in Anthropology, with a minor in Film. Her ambitions as an archaeologist are to study piracy in China during the Ming dynasty in the South China Sea or during the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean. She would also like to study the historical archaeology of the Eastern Asian or the Polynesian Island nations. Jeanette's goal is to be scuba certified within the next five years. Outside of archaeology, she loves to read adventure and crime novels and has spent the last three years working on a television show pilot.

Crossing the line

This year the students taking UWF's terrestrial field schools got a great opportunity to see the different techniques and research designs employed at both of the terrestrial field schools.

On Thursday the crew from Molino, as well as P.I.s Dr. John Worth and Ms. Norma Harris came to Arcadia. On the right, you can see Arcadia Principle Investigator, Mr. John Phillips, explaining the water-powered milling done at the Arcadia Mill industrial complex during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Below, Ms. Harris and UWF grad student Linda Suzanne Borgen ponder our block, while the Arcadia and Molino crews swap tales and catch up.

On Friday morning, the Arcadia crew headed out to Molino. The Pensacola Colonial Frontiers field school is examining the remains of the Spanish Mission San Joseph de Escambe along the Escambia River, near Molino, Florida. This site not only includes evidence from the 18th Century Spanish and Apalachee Native American populations, but the previous. prehistoric residents as well.

The Arcadia students got to see how these student archaeologists employed a number of new techniques to study a considerably different data set. On the left, you can see Arcadia students checking out prehistoric stone tools and Native American ceramics.

The Molino crew's site has a complicated occupation. The graduate student supervisors explained how they had attempted to tease apart and isolate a number of overlapping buildings.

After showing us the uncovered mission components- including a soldiers' barracks, a possible well, and Mission-period and prehistoric-period Native American dwellings -Dr. Worth took the crew to the Escamia River to explain its importance for the mission, as well as for later nineteenth-century milling ventures. Unlike Arcadia's mills, the only evidence for the late 19th century mill dynamited at the Molino site in the 1930's is a bevy of discarded Gonzales-manufactured bricks and the large, granite blocks used to mount the mill's steam engines.

We are quite grateful to Dr. Worth, Ms. Harris and the supervisors and crew of the Molino crew for hosting us. It was great to see all the hard work they've completed this summer and we hope they learned a little about archaeology from us!

Here, Molino supervisor Danielle Dadiego attempts to explain the complicated series of architectural and occupation features she and her crew uncovered in this trench.

That's all for now. Hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing Fourth of July Weekend!

Student Highlight! Becky Jadallah

Becky is a returning student with a previous B.A. from UWF in Education. She is presently a senior seeking a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and is looking forward to beginning her Anthropology M.A. at UWF. She is interested in artifact preservation, historical archaeology, and prehistoric archaeology. She is excited to be part of the UWF 2010 Arcadia Mill Village Terrestrial Field School.

Alex Attacks!

Unfortunately, Hurricane Alex in the Gulf had us ducking for cover all week long! Luckily for us, the rain stayed away just long enough for us to make some new discoveries and open a new trench. Right is one of the many bricks found in Unit 12- this one had a Bonifay maker's mark stamped into its surface.

While finishing a level in Unit 12 and preparing Unit 3 for excavation, we noticed a new feature. In this picture below, notice the light colored line along the far right in the right hand unit. After conferring with our P.I., John Phillips, we believe that we might have a dripline! A dripline is made when water runs off a gutter-less roof and washes light-weight sediments away. This process leaves a coarse, pebbly line that differs considerably from the sediments outside of it. Finding a dripline helps us identify the orientation, and perhaps even the roofline style of the building (or buildings) we're studying!

Colors have been enhanced so that the dripline is more easily discernible.

Finally, on Wednesday and Thursday we worked on opening our first Trench (left). Trench 1 consists of four adjacent 1 meter by 1 meter units several meters south of Block 1. This trench bisects a large, very artifact rich tree fall. Although the top several levels will be highly disturbed because of said tree fall, we hope to find intact midden (or garbage dump). Nothing tells more about people from the past than the things they threw away!

We've already recovered diagnostic ceramics and a piece of writing slate. We're excited to see what lies under the treefall!

Student Highlight! Salina Hebert

Salina is an undergraduate student at UWF majoring in archaeology. She has been interested in archaeology since a very young age. She is interested in prehistoric southeastern archaeology. Salina plans on pursuing a master's degree and eventually getting a doctorate in archaeology.