UNM 2013 Fall Field School - Day 3

 

 By Leon Natker

Today was our third day working at San Luis de Cabezon.  The peak is a volcanic plug and very pretty in the morning light.  Last night an early winter storm passed through northern New Mexico bringing rain to some areas and snow to higher elevations. When we arrived at the site we discovered it had rained during the night and left the site very muddy.  Because of the combination of clay and sand in the soil the mud clung to our boots as we were unloading the trucks making them very heavy. One of our classmates commented that walking with these muddy boots felt like we were playing the monster in Frankenstein. The mud slowed us down a little but we got the equipment unloaded and prepared to return to the units we started excavating yesterday. Everyone was a bit worried that the rain might have caused damage to their units.  The rain had soaked the top soil but in some cases that made it easier to work with.

My dig partner and I had excavated to the bottom of our first level yesterday, so we began our second level. Charcoal and ash were concentrated in a particular area of the unit. Dr. Wills said he thought it might represent a hearth or other feature, so he instructed us to expand our 1 x 1 m unit to a 2 x 2 m unit in order to capture the entire possible feature. My partner and I repeated the process of laying out a unit. In archaeology it is very important to do all of the preparatory work accurately so that if you do find a feature or artifact you can record it in a way that any future archaeologist will know what it looked like in the ground when you found it.  We finished our preparation just before lunch.  Lunch is a good time for all of us.  We sit in a circle together and talk about what we did during the morning and enjoy the scenery—the picture only shows a third of the group of 15.

 

After lunch my partner and I started excavating our new units.  One of Graduate Assistants came by to instruct us on maintaining vertical control of the unit as we excavate and how important that is.. That sounds mysterious but it really isn’t. Think of a unit as a cake still in the baking pan.  Instead of cutting small pieces out of it one at a time you want to slice thin layers evenly as you go down to the bottom in order to remove it. That is maintaining vertical control. It’s another important thing to do so that future archaeologists know where you found things.

 

A little after two o’clock we got a special treat.  The University of New Mexico Office of Contract Archaeology on another site on the pipeline.  One of the archaeologists visited us and said they had found something very interesting and we could come and take a look. At the site, the OCA archaeologists were excavating a pithouse. Within the pithouse, they had found a number of pieces of groundstone, including several manos and a large metate. After we all had a good look we went back to our site.  By now it was time to clean up for the day.  We didn’t finish excavating to the second level of our unit but that leaves something exciting for tomorrow.