The question remains: what does Feature I tell us? It is one thing to excavate a trash pit; to properly document, catalogue, and interpret it is something else entirely. This process, exhaustive as it might be, is necessary to understanding Feature I. Commencing the work, a lone student approaches the trash pit. She will spend the coming days drawing every one of its artifacts.
She places a massive, stringed grid over the western half of Feature I. It roughly segments the trash pit into 20x20cm squares. These are more workable than attempting to draw the 1x1m feature in its entirety. Using this grid, she eyeballs the size and position of some artifacts. Others call for more precision. She crouches, several measuring tapes extended around and over the feature. After finding the perimeter of a noteworthy artifact, she makes a scale drawing on oversized graph paper. She looks, measures, and draws; rinses and repeats. The process is slow. Long morning shadows fade into the noontime haze without detection.
Days later the drawing is finally complete. With the feature now recorded from overhead, a new team begins extracting artifacts. They only extract half of the trash pit, however. The goal: to understand the relationship of the artifacts to the soil’s profile.
Days later the drawing is finally complete. With the feature now recorded from overhead, a new team begins extracting artifacts. They only extract half of the trash pit, however. The goal: to understand the relationship of the artifacts to the soil’s profile.
When the profile is clean, the excavating team sees a thick lens of red clay which extends beneath the artifacts. They immediately recall an Oakfield Probe from earlier in the excavation of Feature I. It revealed that subsoil was at least 16cm beneath Stratum I. Since the top of the trash pit was almost immediately under the surface of Stratum I, and since the red clay visibly runs below the artifacts, the team guesses something else is hiding beneath the trash pit.
The remaining artifacts are extracted from Feature I. What the team sees amazes them: “busy” soil had been under the trash pit. The dark mottles, the lighter inclusions, and the depth measured by the Oakfield Probe – all suggest something beneath Feature I.
Unfortunately, the field school will not be able to dig deeper this summer. What lies beneath Feature I will be left for future archaeologists and field school students. Regardless, what we’ve learned already is impressive.
Unfortunately, the field school will not be able to dig deeper this summer. What lies beneath Feature I will be left for future archaeologists and field school students. Regardless, what we’ve learned already is impressive.
The relative “thinness” of the trash pit suggests it’s the result of a single dump. Perhaps it was part of the Green Corn ritual, also known as busk. Occurring in late summer, this was a harvest and world-renewal ceremony, part of which included a village-wide cleaning. Supporting this, a preliminary look at the artifacts in Feature I date it to sometime in the 13th century – the same period in which major mound construction and use occurred. We must be cautious in our speculation, but all signs point toward this trash pit being integral to the story of our site.
-Allen Luethke and Kelly Teboe
-Allen Luethke and Kelly Teboe