Etowah Archaeological Field School: Week 4

Most of our efforts shifted to the west side of Mounds A and C this week, thanks to some new data Chet Walker collected for us on a set of anomalies in that part of the site. However, things kept going on the east side as well.

Grant and Tim continued mapping and removing the broken vessel fragments in Grid 6 and then expanded to the south in hopes of finding some posts to go with what looks like a house floor. They exposed more of the broken pots, mapped and remove them and, on Friday, came down on some things that might be posts. Hopefully, things will be clearer on Monday. In addition to the whole vessel—which Grant emptied of its soil fill during the week and found nothing inside—we should have major portions of a few more vessels to reconstruct from this house. That plus some good carbon samples should allow us to date it pretty securely.

Amy and Will continued working on 1x2m unit that we placed to investigate a unique anomaly also Grid 6. Unlike most of the other anomalies, this one is defined on low magnetism rather than high magnetism.

The unit revealed some pretty confusing stratigraphy of which we never really made clear sense. It appears that some pits were dug in this area, but may have been intruded upon by natural disturbances like tree roots and rodent burrows. Maybe if we study the profiles long enough we will make some sense of it all.

On the west side, we continued the units in Grid 19 where the circular structure is located. It is a big one and very clear in the gradiometer data. 

Tara and Anna finished a unit on its east side where they came down on the very edge of a daub concentration. Just to the east of it they found a couple of nice posts and a small pit feature. On the west side of the building, Trey and Julia excavated a unit that came down squarely on an arc of daub (that fit perfectly what the gradiometer showed). Just to the east of that daub concentration they found two nice, single-set posts not unlike the ones Anna and Tara found. Their close association with the daub arc makes it pretty convincing that the building was made of single-set posts and then its walls were daubed with clay. We got a few Late Wilbanks phase diagnostics (1325-1375) just above the daub suggesting it may date to that phase. Hopefully we captured some carbon in the posts that we can data as well.

Grids 16, 17, and 18 all have very clear anomalies that should represent single-set post buildings. Brenden, Danny, and others excavated a unit in Grid 17 and came down on a very nice daub surface. 

It covers the southern ¾ of the unit’s floor and was within 20 cm of the surface. You can see some wood and grass impressions in the daub. Immediately to the north of that surface Brenden uncovered and excavated a relatively small (ca. 10cm diameter) but deep post (almost 50 cm). The fun thing about this post is that you can see its charred remains trapped within the collapsed daub wall just next to it. This really looks like the wall burned and fell to the inside of the house. Brenden found some Wilbanks diagnostics with this building as well.

James, Danny, and Nile worked on a unit in Grid 16 that looked very similar. In this case, we placed the unit on off the edge of the magnetic highs of the anomaly hoping to capture the outer wall. 

They diligently dug 70cm down only to find that we were likely too far outside of the building to find posts. They did, however, find some cool artifacts including a portion of a broken celt, two pipe bowl fragments (one stone, one clay) and some more Late Wilbanks phase diagnostic pottery. They opened up a unit immediately to the west on Friday with the hope of encountering the structure’s wall. In that unit they came down on a daub concentration and hopefully there will be posts nearby.

We had the pleasure of hosting a visit from Georgia State Senator Jason Carter and his family, including Jim Langford of the Coosawattee Foundation. We set up a unit in Grid 18 over the third of these structures. 

Jason’s two boys had a great time excavating and screening and found several pieces of a Ruddercomb Incised vessel in the midden just above a daub concentration. I suspect this house is a lot like the ones Brenden and James et al. examined. It is interesting that all three seem to date to the Late Wilbanks phase as I expected them to date to the Brewster phase (AD 1475-1550). Hopefully the Carter house (as we will now call it) and the one being worked on by James and Danny will be done early next week.

These three buildings do a pretty good job of confirming that the Type 1 anomalies Chet identified really are single-set post buildings packed with daub. This coming week I am anxious to spend more time on some anomalies that I think should be wall-trench buildings.

In the middle of the week we opened up two new units on a large complex of anomalies in Grid 20. Taken together they seem to represent one large building not unlike ones Larson excavated beneath Mound C. 

I suspect, like what Larson found, we will eventually see that there are several buildings in this anomaly. Trey and Julia began a unit on the building’s south side while Anna and Tara stared on its northern side. Tara and Anna came down on an interesting daub surface that covers the entire unit floor. 

I believe they have found some Etowah period (AD 100-1200) diagnostic pottery above that daub surface. Instead of digging through that daub, I have asked them to open up another unit immediately north of their original unit. I hope that we will be able to make more sense of this side of the building once they finish it.

Trey and Julia came down upon a dark and fairly artifact-rich feature on the unit’s south wall.

In it they found plenty of Late Etowah phase (AD 1100-1200) diagnostics as well as part of a ground stone artifact (maybe a celt) and a worked stone piece that might be part a stone gorget. This feature continues into the south wall of the unit so we cannot see its shape. It looks like it might be a trench, but we will not know until we expand to the south. One post is visible at the bottom of the feature and in its profile.

The surprise of the summer (so far) has come out of the units in Grid 15. As the gradiometer data shows, this looks like a large, rectangular building. We located units at its edge on both the north and south sides. 

On the north side, Owen and James came down on a solid clay surface that was red in the south and orange in the north, split by a narrow band of brown sandy soil. On the south, Luis and Ben found the same thing except they exposed mostly red clay. Puzzled, I got out my archaeological crutch—a one-inch push core. Using it, I discovered that the clay surface extended a few meters north and south of my units and disappeared. More specifically, it sloped down until I couldn’t find it in my cores.

Suspecting we were dealing with a clay platform and not just a building, I asked Owen and Johann (with the help of Boy Scouts, Josh, Mr. Blair, and Barbara) to extend the northern unit through the clay platform while Luis, Ben, and Debbie were tasked with extending their unit to the south in hopes of exposing that outer slope of the platform.

Below is the final profile of the northern unit and the effort it took the create it.

You can see the homogenous red clay layer slope down and disappear beneath an orange layer that over laps it. In between is that brown sandy soil. Beneath it all is an incredible blue-gray silty clay layer with lots of charcoal flecks and some artifacts. At the very bottom the red clay subsoil was finally found (at 140cm). The red clay surface looks like the first stage of this platform. I think the brown sandy soil is wash from its exposed surface that went down the flank. The orange clay represents an expansion of the platform after it had been in use. Interestingly, there are no plow scars visible on the surface of the platform, which tells me that its summit was not destroyed by plowing. It also tells me that the expansion of the platform only happened laterally—they wanted a bigger surface. The blue-gray layer at the bottom is a puzzle. It was put there by people and its color looks like something that was taken from a submerged setting. The fact that it is flecked with charcoal and has artifacts throughout suggests that people used it before it was deposited at the base of this platform.

The southern expansion is still going, but one good looking charcoal-filled feature is visible on the platform surface as are a couple of potential posts. The presumed slope of the orange expansion hopefully will be exposed tomorrow. Then we will investigate the features present on the summit and try to understand when and why this platform was built.

To say the least, it was another great week. The crew is doing a great job and we had more wonderful volunteers to help us out. Debbie Wallsmith and her son Danny Congleton along with Mr. Blair and Nile Freeman came back out for more. We had Boy Scouts from several troops brought by Amy Morris (Jacob Morris and Bradley Pilcher along with friend Mark LaSalle) and Shea McClure (Jordan Mercure and Jackson Counts). Barbara Flack helped dig that deep unit on the platform. Maricruz Salizar came out on Friday and we somehow lured John away from volunteer grass cutting at Etowah to dig with us. As I already mentioned, we also hosted Georgia state Senator Jason Carter, his parents, and two sons as well. Although I missed my teacher and friend, David Hally also paid a visit to the site on Friday.

This coming week is going to be even better, even busier with guests and volunteers. With only two weeks left, the push is on to get as much done as we can.

Etowah Archaeological Field School: Week 3

This past week we finished up some units and opened up some new ones. It was a tricky start to the week as we had just enough rain to keep our geophysical guru Chet Walker from getting going. By Thursday and Friday, we had more great data and new units to open up.

The units in Grids 1 and 2, 5, 6, and 7 were all closed out. Last week we saw the nice wall-trench in Grid 7, the small posts in Grid 5, and the single-set posts in Trey and Owen’s unit in Grids 1 and 2. This week, after digging down past a meter, Anna, James, and Tim came down upon a big chunk of daub and then a couple of single-set posts and a shallow pit feature. This was as we had hoped given the magnetic signature of the anomaly investigated.

The unit dug by Grant and Ben in Grid 6 continued to be confusing. At 70cm down they came down upon a fairly wide trench feature. This could be a wall-trench, but it is wider than the one found in Grid 7 and does not contain any evidence of posts. This trench feature doesn’t show up in the magnetic or GPR data, but might have been masked by the single-set post building apparent in those data.

As a way to clear up this confusion, we opened up another 1-m unit on the south side of this same anomaly. Within 20cm, Grant and Tim came down upon some burned daub, a piece of burned cane, a smashed pot, and a whole pot all sitting on a surface. This is obviously the floor to the building that shows up in the gradiometer data that we somehow missed in the first test unit excavated on it. The smashed pot looks to be a Wilbanks Complicated Stamped vessel, while the whole pot is a plain jar with a strap handle. Grant and Tim took the whole vessel out on Friday but still have the mass of sherds to map and excavate. I doubt we will see the wall posts in this unit so we will have to expand it to the south. We have great datable material and lots of daub, now I need to confirm that the wall is made of single-set posts.

At the insistence of my graduate student, Amy, we opened up 1x2m unit on the edge of southernmost anomaly in Grid 6. It is unique in that it is defined by magnetic lows instead of highs. I still suspect it is a wall-trench building, but the proof is in the dirt. At this point, they have encountered some stratigraphy that may be indicative of a wall-trench but we’ve found no real trench features or posts. Perhaps tomorrow will tell. In this unit, they did find a very nice discoidal made of stone. It came, as have most of the artifacts in this unit, from the southernmost part where the suspected trench may be.

 Late last week we opened up a unit on the anomaly in Grid 4. It is a little unusual, but should represent a wall-trench building. Unfortunately, the crew excavated down past a meter and did not encounter any features. Like the instance in Grid 6, we may have placed this unit poorly. We did encounter a basket-loaded surface at around 40 to 60 cm. This anomaly is located on the slope of a landscape feature that looks like a flood chute cut through the site by the Etowah River. Those basket-loaded fills may represent an attempt to level that chute or it may represent some other activity associated with the modification or even creation of this feature. For now we have moved on, but may return to this anomaly later.

We also opened and finished a 1-m unit in Grid 8 to investigate the large anomaly there. As the crew excavated, we could see two single-set posts that originated from the plowzone. We did not, however, find the anticipated wall-trench building. We may try again with another test unit, but for now we will move on to other anomalies in other parts of the site.

Chet really got going with data collecting on Thursday, with the help of GPR guru Kent Schneider, and finished off all the grids we need by Friday afternoon. I will show more of those data once we have them in digital format, but they include two really interesting circular buildings and two very large “longhouses.”

Friday before lunch we set in two units on a large circular building west of Mound C. This building is on the scale of the reconstructed earthlodge at Macon—big. 

We also set in a unit on one of the large, rectangular buildings. It is another big one, measuring some 30m on its longest axis.

This week we will continue working n the units we have open. We also will start some 1-m squares on three anomalies west of Mound C that look like single-set post buildings. Hopefully we will do the same on another circular anomaly located north of Mound A and also a couple of wall-trench buildings in one of the discrete neighborhoods we think we can see.

We were fortunate to have some great volunteers help us this week, including CJ Jaramillo, Dana Russell and her girls, David Kasriel, Bob and Deb Skarda, Dick Brunelle, and the incomparable Pat LoRusso. We all really appreciate the help and really enjoyed meeting and working with them all…and we all hope they will come out again to share in our efforts. This coming week we’ll have some returning volunteers and many new ones, including the much anticipated Boy Scouts.

This past week was my daughter’s turn to help us out. Like my son, she had a great time digging, screening and driving the gator. She also had a great time hanging out with the crew after work. She gave them all nicknames that I am sure they will treasure for a long time to come.

Mama has been cooking away and trying to get us free (or reduced price) tickets to all kinds of local attractions. So far we are set to go to a minor league baseball game and a couple of local museums plus the Atlanta History Center. While I went home yesterday, some of the crew enjoyed the Cartersville Rodeo —making sure to soak up all the culture Cartersville has to offer.

It was a busy week after work too. On Tuesday Dr. Reilly gave a lecture on Mississippian religion to the students, Wednesday we were all treated to a lecture on geophysical prospecting from none other than Chet Walker, and on Thursday I spoke to the Northwest Georgia Chapter of the Society for Georgia Archaeology who had their monthly meeting at Etowah. That latter meeting brought in a huge crowd of about 90 people. As always happens when I come to Cartersville, people were anxious to hear about what we are doing and what we are finding. Saturday I spoke for the Etowah Day of Discovery for Kids hosted at the park before the fine folks from the Waring Lab of the University of West Georgia organized a mock dig and staff from the park lead tours and demonstrated Native American games and weapons.

We all ended the week tired, but it is a good tired.

Etowah Archaeological Field School: Week 2

Well, the clarity I had hoped for is coming in fits and starts. We had a lot of rain this week so we really only worked about 2.5 days. In that short period of time we came down on features in most of the units open. And with one exception, those features seem to be fitting into my expectations.

The two units in Grid 1 and 2 continued through that thick midden. The one investigating the easternmost anomaly came down on a series of black stains intruding into a red clay surface. 

That clay surface should be the plaza built in the Late Wilbanks phase (AD 1325-1375). On Friday Owen and Trey began excavating the features visible at 80cm and several have turned out to be single-set posts. We’ll see if we can make a wall out of them, but in general I am happy with that result.

Anna, James, and Tim have been working in the unit located on the westernmost anomaly in Grids 1 and 2. They are still going through midden but are coming down on a large burned daub concentration on Friday. I am hopeful that they will expose features soon as well. If we are right about the daub being associated only with single-set post buildings, this unit will find what we had predicted as well. 

At about 30cm below the surface in this unit Anna, James, and Tim found a lead ball—musket shot. We had hoped it might be a 16^th century Spanish artifact, but it looks like, based on size, that it is later and somehow found its way down the soil profile (probably through plowing).

Tara and Julia came down onto red clay subsoil earlier this week in their unit in Grid 5. After laboring through fairly sterile soils, they came down on a charcoal-rich feature and 5 small stains that look like post holes. In fact, Friday they excavated at least three of those and they are indeed small (ca. 10cm diameter) and deep (30cm or more) post holes arranged in a nice line along the west wall. 

The magnetic anomaly found in this grid should be a wall-trench building. So far we haven’t seen that trench, but the posts Tara and Julia found are smaller and deeper than those in the single-set post buildings. I suspect that once we study the profile of this unit we will find some indication that the trench was there but we missed it because it was so indistinct.

In Grid 6 Ben and Grant also worked through a fairly sterile few levels followed by a relatively sparse midden. They have come down on a floor that has what looks like a wall-trench running west to east across the middle of the unit. There also appear to be at least two single-set posts along the western wall. If I have interpreted the gradiometer data correctly for this location, Ben and Grant should have come down on a portion of a single-set post building. It may be there, but clearly there also is a wall-trench building. We will explore the gradiometer data more closely to see if we can find evidence for the two buildings here.

Will and Brendon have been working in a most confusing unit in Grid 7. I thought they were digging through sloping mound fill layers. However, after some work we figured out that they have a very nice wall-trench running at a diagonal through their unit—right where the magnetic anomaly goes through the unit. This is my poster child for a wall-trench. It is straight-sided, fairly deep ca. 30 cm, and has stains from a closely spaced row of posts at its base. Like the posts in Julia and Tara’s unit, these are small, but unlike those posts they are very close together.

Johann, a visiting Jesse Dalton, my son Avery (and various guest-screeners) opened up a new unit on what I expect to be a wall-trench building in Grid 4. They have excavated to about 40 cm so far and seem to have exposed what looks like basket loaded fill. 

Topographically this isn’t a mound. Instead it looks like a flood chute cutting through the site. If my interpretation holds, then the building we are searching for may have been buried beneath intentionally placed fills designed to level out a topographic low. It will be fun to see if my predictions come true. Barring more rain delays, we should know by the end of the day Monday.

We will start a unit on Grid 8 on Monday and hopefully find another wall-trench building. It may take until the end of the week to know.

Chet Walker comes back out Monday to set in and collect gradiometer and ground-penetrating radar data on more grids. That will allow us to set up more units in other areas of the site. So far we have concentrated on areas east of Mound A. Chet will allow us to move north of Mound A and final west of it to an area where no excavations have ever been conducted.

Now that we are starting to find features, our next big challenge is dating the architecture we are uncovering. We are finding that the features we have dug do not contain many temporal diagnostics and in many cases the middens above are sparse or mixed making their contents problematic for dating. Our fallback strategy is to collect all feature fills, process them through flotation, and hope we capture enough carbon to obtain radiocarbon dates. I will bring a flotation drum back to Cartersville with me on Sunday.

The crew is settling into our communal life and the house is running pretty smoothly. Mama got some needed (and I am sure welcome) assistance with cooking from Owen who has the patience of Job and the culinary acumen to help Mama produce good food for 17. We’ve got meal ideas from lots of people and a brussel sprout recipes from Grant to look forward to this coming week. Hopefully the rain will hold off and let us get some long, productive days in this week.

My 8-year old son came with me to the site this week. He had a great time driving the gator around and around the site, shuttling grad students, photo logs, equipment, and water hither and yon. That lasted for a couple of days and then he got the digging bug. We bought him a Marshalltown trowel and he went to work with Johann, Jesse, and crew in Grid 4. The photos below tell all.

This next week my daughter will join us. Then later in the week we’ll get some Boy Scouts out for a day. Our resident Eagle Scout, Owen, will be in charge that outreach effort.