Daily Trench Journal

Area F

Trench 1

July 6, 2002

We started this day by taking many soil samples. The reason for these soil samples is that, again, last year we had a large black ashy layer of doom. Said ashy layer had been deposited upon the baked clay surface. Although the surface appears to be very clean, with a limited amount of pottery and bone, we wanted to do various tests on the soil. So that it is remembered exactly what we did I am going to write it down. Andy, if you are reading this sometime in the future then I hope this helps. All soil samples came from locus 1060, which was basically the majority of the trench encircling the former oven. These soil samples were taken for three reasons. Some were taken for flotation (KT’s 8-10 and 14-16). Other samples were taken for chemical analysis (11, 17-19, 23). Still other samples were taken for micro artifact analysis (KT numbers 12-13, 21-22). Many of these soil samples come from the surface near the oven, while others are just part of the surface, which is still a good place for soil sampling since the black ashy layer of doom was deposited on this surface.

Then we continued to push down on this surface where all of the black ash had fallen in the past. Since this surface appeared to cover most of the trench we continued to excavate it as one locus. Hopefully we can better understand this area after blasting through this surface. The surface may have been an outside one; at the very least it was a huge baked surface area. This area where the ashy layer fell didn’t give us tons of artifacts, as it looks as though it was kept very clean.

We spent the last little while of the day troweling the entire trench to make it more level. After this surface is removed it should make it easier to look for changes. Right near the end of the day it looked as though we may have a color change, which may turn into a pit, we shall see in two days.

CM