End of Week 4!

 

Awesome progress this week as everyone worked to finish their test units! All the digging is done and official photos taken in all the units, and there is just some paperwork to make sure everything is fully documented. 

In some areas though, the last bits of digging revealed more questions than answers. For example in Unit 05 (above), there is one large, isolated posthole that doesn't seem related to anything else we've found so far.

Unit 06 has a large pit feature (about 85cm diameter), as well as this weird rectangle in the northeast corner. The pit is exciting, and will probably be interesting to excavate, but we aren't quite sure what the rectangle could be. It is too wide for a typical wall trench, but matches the directional orientation of other features at the site. Hopefully knocking down the baulk between Units 05 and 06 will provide some clarity, since it will let us see the whole thing.

In addition to finishing digging in our test units today, we have been working on knocking down some baulks between units 01/02, 01/04, and 10/11 in the first stage of trying to expand the excavation block. Near Unit 04, we also started opening an extension of where we expected the perpendicular trenches in Units 01 and 04 to meet if they were part of a single structure. And amazingly, they do! We officially have our first corner!

Next week, we will continue knocking down the baulks, and start opening up some extensions into new areas to chase out these interesting features and get a clearer idea of what is going on in this section of the site.

In the meantime, here are some highlights from this week: