Last official day of field school

As of Friday morning, the last official day of the 2011 field school, all but two excavation blocks at Mission Escambe had already been backfilled by morning (see picture to right), so we concentrated most of our students in the southernmost area, where several remaining feature and unit transects had to be excavated before documenting the final profiles and plan view maps of each unit, ultimately to be followed by backfilling. Nevertheless, despite our careful plans to finish excavations with a long day on Friday, the skies opened up mid-morning and continued to pour until we finally gave in and moved to the gazebo at the Molino boat ramp for an early lunch.

As radar views confirmed the continuous onslaught of rain, however, the crew took a celebratory swim in the Escambia River before packing up for the last day, realizing that the staff and student supervisors, along with a handful of student volunteers, will have to return for some additional work next week. Our final bedraggled crew shot, taken between episodes of spontaneous puddle jumping, appears below.