The end is near and we realize that we will not be able to finish everything by the end of the week. Today we did some back-filling and James Berry helped us with his tractor and box blade - saved us a lot of shoveling. Feature 20 is half completed and Aaron began work on Feature 21. Ending a field school is always done with mixed feelings; usually folks are tired and ready to go home but at the same time we wish we could keep going. So we are winding down and we had several breaks this afternoon. Linda Wall gave us a surprise ice cream party with C&C Ice Cream cranking out vanilla ice cream on site with a 5 gallon tub and a 76 year old John Deere motor to crank it. What a treat!.
Last night we enjoyed a wonderful barbeque dinner at the restored McDowell House at Quaker Meadows hosted by Lynn Galvin and Fluff Manderson of the Historic Burke Foundation. We all enjoyed the food and kind hospitality. I would like to thank the Historic Burke Foundation very much for all of the support they have provided for this project. There are many others to thank as well. I especially want to thank James and Pat Berry who have been extremely kind to allow us to continue this important project. Thanks also to Linda and Carl Wall who have helped in many ways. And, of course, thanks to all of the field school participants who worked so hard to make this a very successful excavation season.
The week 4 crew. Front row: Zoe Keefer-Norris, Chris Rodning, Niki Keese, Jeremy McFalls. Back row: Jared Garland, Kip Kummerle, Jessica Smeeks, Will Spoon, Caroline Ketron, Bill Robb, Emily Dale, Paul Mantia, Linda Wall, Aaron Brunnitt, Dave Moore.
Caroline and Will found this very large piece of charcoal at the base of the feature. The profile shows the south half of this feature excavated.
Aaron began cleaning Feature 21 and exposed a much larger cluster of fire-cracked rocks probably used as some sort of hearth or roasting facility.
Chris discusses the art of drawing profiles that show the various levels of soil.
C&C Ice Cream from Morganton arrived on site courtesy of Linda Wall. What a great way to enjoy an afternoon break - with home-made vanilla ice cream. Jared looks ready to enjoy it. Notice Jeremy in the background who wanted to keep shoveling instead of eating ice cream!
Aaron and Emily thought this was a good idea, too..
The day ended with Dave and Chris toasting the crew for all their good hard work (it was a very tasty sparkling Catawba Grape Juice!).
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