Turned out to be Dr. Smith's famous pear butter accompanied by fresh baked biscuits delivered to the students this morning. Apparently, it was not bad...

Here, Amy is finishing out Level 12 in one of the western units -- as deep as we can go in an excavation unit of this size. The profiles (side views) on these units are impressive...

They're pretty obviously into a much earlier occupation period at this level -- now getting large secondary chert flakes from the manufacture of large tools. And there must be even deeper deposits throughout the floodplain here.

This is going to be difficult feature to figure out -- reportedly (from various 19th century reports) a 5 foot high mound, but it obviously is also some kind of large excavated feature extending well below the surface that was eventually filled with limestone. We may not know enough by the end of this season to parse it out...

On the west end, one unit backfilled....

Other crews are almost done with their units today... Shonda and Holly are working on this one -- slowed again by another possible smudge pit.

This unit will also have interesting profiles to draw...

Later in the day, we had some visitors. Young Austin was so thrilled by the chance to find cool things that Dr. P. let him try his hand working with John. He was so excited that he'll probably be back tomorrow for our last Volunteer Day.

The new eastern unit in the midden is producing just as spectacular results as the other.... Amazing bone preservation -- here a Box turtle shell...

And one or two more bone tools -- needles or something. An intriguing question for our interpretation will be -- what are they doing here that requires so many bone tools?

The pottery is also amazing -- giant single lug handle from a jar that must have held many gallons of liquid...

More big fragments of fabric impressed pans...

And a truly extraordinary and unexpected object -- a fragment of a cedar artifact plated with copper. The wood was so well preserved that I initially thought it was just a piece of mulch off somebody's boot -- but the green stains and the context clearly indicate is came from some major prehistoric object.

We still interested in finding the "waters" -- so Shonda was out with help from Nick to start some deeper coring in the possible spring depressions. Ran out of time today, so that will proceed in the next few days.

A grand day. As we reach the last few days of the project, there are lots of things to do -- so, despite the probable rain tomorrow, we're moving ahead with working around it as best we can. Getting my rain gear out tonight :)