Pensacola Colonial Frontiers, 2009-2015: 2012 Field School Begins!

Crew shot at Molino fairgrounds: (L-R) Wesley Garrett,

Michelle Pigott, Danielle Dadiego, Kristina de la Cruz, Patty

McMahon, Kendall Burns, Brooke Joseph, Bobby Bernal,

Katie Brewer, Nick Simpson (not pictured: John Worth).

After nearly ten months absence, today marked the return of UWF students to Molino to begin the 2012 Pensacola Colonial Frontiers summer field school at Mission Escambe. This year's crew includes Field Director Patty McMahon, Site Supervisor Danielle Dadiego, and Supervisors-in-Training Katie Brewer and Michelle Pigott, all veterans from last year's dig, along with six undergraduate students, including Nick Simpson (also a veteran from last year), and newcomers Bobby Bernal, Kendall Burns, Kristina de la Cruz, Wesley Garrett, and Brooke Joseph.

Danielle Dadiego explains previous excavations in Area C

to the rest of the 2012 crew.

This year's fieldwork will focus on resolving several important questions regarding the layout of the mission's core area, including tracing the long wall-trench feature that we have been chasing since 2009 in what we call Area B, and which we now suspect to have been a stockade wall constructed in 1760 around the cavalry barracks and possibly other mission structures, and several overlapping structure walls that are overlain by clay cap layers just south of the stockade wall in Area C. We hope to clarify the configuration of this documented stockade, and trace out at least one complete structure pattern in the area of "wall-trench spaghetti." More details will be posted here on the blog as we move forward, but today's post will simply comprise an assortment of photos introducing the crew and some of our startup activities.