Wandering around for awhile, the perched water tables are receding but they are still there... Nobody really likes them, but... c'est la vie.

Apparently Amy, Abbigail, and Ben are still having fun dealing with the shovels tests...

Much of our investigation area is filled with crayfish (aka crawdads) -- as we encounter them, we're carefully retrieving and relocating them as there are several species that are threatened or endangered.

Well Day 4 did not produce any spectacular artifacts, which is just fine with us. It did allow some of us to have some fun at the end of the week....Macie was craving a philly cheese steak for several days now, so mysteriously one was delivered to her at lunch today... Let it not be said that the MTSU field school does not answer as many requests as we can....

Then our long time field school friend Georgia Dennis showed up in the afternoon with popsicles and cookies :) We like friends who visit and bring gifts -- just saying

Lauren and Melody guzzling the popsicles...

Maddie -- classic fail on popsicle. Still happy.

And yeah, those cookies were popular too -- Amy happy :)

To close on a more serious note -- the hard work of the students on the shovel tests does support my assertion that the earliest road was along the property boundary -- indicated in the below with yellow arrows. We're also starting to think that there is a relic creek channel indicated in white. The aerial photos and our shovel test data all support this right now.

Our current info suggests a knoll overlooking the relic creek channel that has the highest artifact density, midden, and the growing grass also shows a strong correlation with that knoll. So, we'll start with excavation units there -- and on the far other end of the field, where we found an intriguing feature today as well.