Despite the long working evening, Dr. P and I made it over to the Castalian Springs Mounds before dawn with a few diehard students to view the summer solstice sunrise from atop Mound 1. I've been there many such mornings in the last 10 years, but this was a truly memorable one.
It gets light pretty fast once the sun is up :). Amy, Lauren, Holly, and Nick admiring the vestiges of the sunrise...
Dr. P is also in awe (actually he is asleep standing up -- I didn't want to wake him).
The latecomers showed up about 8. Lauren did take a nap in a wheelbarrow over lunch...
Later in the day, more interesting ceramic discoveries. This handle with a "double horn" and wide groove is well known to us from the mound site excavations -- and this one dates to about AD 1200-1250. The incised and noded rim bowl fragment found in the same level is a very rare type from the Nashville region -- Mound Place Incised. Our best guess at this point is that it should date to quite a bit later -- but it is quite possible that this discovery (along with forthcoming radiocarbon dates) will push it back 50 years or more earlier than we currently think. That's why we continue to reexamine what we think we know as new data comes in.
Digs continued... Here Miranda works with bamboo tools (avoiding metal scratches) to expose a large fragment of ceramic vessel. The "hole" in the middle is an excavated posthole -- its age remains uncertain to us at this point.
Final cleanup of the unit/levels gets more complicated the deeper the units get...
We spent a good part of the afternoon "battening down the hatches" in anticipation of perhaps 2-3 inches of rain from the remnants of the tropical storm headed our way tomorrow. Units are securely covered with plywood, plastic, and heavy landscaping blocks. Here's hoping it holds....
Note.... Excavations were cancelled Thursday, Friday, and Saturday due to rain and high winds. So no posts again until Monday June 26.