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!