End of Week 1

Two fragments of Spanish majolica in situ.

We've come to the end of our first of 10 weeks of fieldwork at Mission Escambe, and in our first four days in the field, we've made remarkably good progress with a smaller team than previous years.  As of Friday we now have a total of six excavation units in progress, totaling 11.25 square meters in area.  Most of the units are already beginning to push below the 19th-century sawmill horizon and into the mission-era deposits, and we've already found several varieties of colonial Spanish and Apalachee ceramics as we make our way down toward the subsoil layers that should reveal evidence of any architectural features like trenches or postholes.  Area C units are already in the yellow-orange clay cap layer, below which we hope to find further evidence for the multiple structures in this area.

Below are an assortment of pictures from Friday's fieldwork:

Wesley Garrett and Patty McMahon work in a 1x1m unit in Area B.  If the 1760 stockade trench turned south here, this unit should catch it.

Brooke Joseph and Katie Brewer trim the walls of a 1x2m unit in Area B.  If the stockade continued to the west after a gate or door in the previous unit just east, this unit may pick it up again.

Danielle Dadiego throws dirt excavated from a new 1x2m unit opened today in Area B, which should intersect the stockade trench if it continued east from our easternmost unit from the 2011 season.

Bobby Bernal takes readings from the total station for a 1x2 unit in Area C which should intersect as many as three wall trenches first identified in 2009.

Kendall Burns holds the prism steady for total station readings in the 1x2 unit noted above.

Nick Simpson and Kristina de la Cruz work to bring their shovel test down below the colonial midden layer and into the underlying subsoil.