4/28/2014

Dru Keyser                                                                                                                           April 28, 2014

36LY0345 Glunk

    Today we went out to the Glunk site (36LY0345) on Dick Snyder's farm to begin our excavation.  I was assigned excavation unit number sixteen.  I began by using my shovel to cut a perimeter along the twine that was strung around four posts that made a four foot by four foot square, leaving a three inch corner balk at each corner.  I then marked out two foot by two foot quads, separating the excavation unit into four quads (Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, Southeast).  It was a bright sunny day, and it had not rained for some time so the ground was fairly dry.  After the first inch, the dirt became very clay-like, which made screening for artifacts much more difficult.  I decided to start with the Southeast quad, where I used my shovel to dig for ten inches, the "historic layer", which we named level one.  For the first nine inches, I used my shovel to remove the dirt, but at about nine inches I began using my trowel to more carefully remove the dirt and straiten the walls of the quad.  Throughout the first ten inches, I found a few pieces of glass and several nails of varying sizes, along with a lot of stone (chert, charcoal, indeterminate rock, etc.) and a few pottery sherds.

    After reaching the ten inch mark in the Southeast quad, I began working on the Southwest quad, using the same method as the with the Southeast quad.  There were no significant finds in the Southeast until my trowel scraped against a stone just above the ten inch mark.  It appeared to be about the size of a softball, so I used a brush and a dental pick to scrape away dirt from around the rock and clean off the dirt so I could take a picture of it.  After clearing away the dirt, I came to realize that it was a pitted hammer stone:

This was a significant find because it is a stone tool that showed obvious use, and because of its provenience, it is definite that it was used by Native Americans in the area and possibly also by someone during the historical period.  

    After reaching the end of level one in the Southeast quad, I began working on the Northwest quad, again using the same method as the two previous quads.  Throughout this quad, several small pieces of pottery and a few more nails were found, as well as many other rocks similar to those found in the Southwest and Southeast quads.  At approximately eight inches, in the West wall, there was a piece of brick embedded in the wall that I pedestal-ed in order to preserve its location in the wall and not damage the wall of my excavation unit.  I continued digging until I reached the end of level one in this quad.

    Finally, I moved on to the final quad, the Northeast quad, where again I used my shovel to remove dirt until about nine inches in depth, where I used my trowel to carefully dig to the bottom of layer one.  This quad yielded many less finds than the others, but still there was a good amount of indeterminate rock, pottery sherds, and a few nails.  After I finished the Northeast quad, I cleaned up my equipment and helped the others clean up theirs', after which we packed up the shed, covered the pits, and left the site for the day.