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!