18 June 2018

Heather A.

Hi everyone it’s Heather! It’s been very hot out today, but we have kept on working and have made progress! Having canopies and tree cover over our work areas has been a huge help!

Tori, Jorge, and Maclaren cleaning up unit 2

Elizabeth and Scout spraying water in unit 1. Brenna cleaning out loose dirt in Unit 3. Lauren cleaning the walls of unit 3 and 5.

So, today we have been working in each of the units we have open. We opened up three units last week, and we are making progress in each of them! Bricks have been located in units 3 and 5. We have also found large pieces of glass shards, terra cotta sherds, bone fragments, and we continue to find some small pieces of transferware. Unit 4 has made it down to level 3 of their unit, and have begun helping excavate unit 5. Unit 2 is almost at a stopping point for their unit, and may be split up and start helping the newer units. Just a few minutes ago, unit 5 found a pig molar in their unit.

I have been working in unit 2, and it has proven to be a bit of a challenge. We have been in layer 2, the rubble layer, for a few days now. It is several centimeters deep and we had only just started to see the bottom of the layer at the end of the day Friday. We are still working on getting the unit flat, and we will see what the next level tells us!

19 June 2018

Hannah

Hello, it’s Hannah again! It is the twelfth day out here at the Wylie House dig site. It is another beautiful, but hot day outside, so we decided to start early to beat the heat. Even though it is hot outside, we have had a productive day. Unit 1, unit 3, and unit 5 have expanded to include a unit 6, but instead of being separate units it is one large feature unit. The feature unit contains the subterranean greenhouse that we have been looking for, and we opened up a sixth unit to determine if the edge of the feature could be found there, but it was determined that the feature is only in units 1, 3, and 5. The feature found is believed to be the greenhouse due to the different colored soil and because that soil creates a series of right angles. Today, the feature unit was scraped clean and photographed and is now being mapped. In unit 4, we have finally found the bottom of layer 2 and are now prepping for a photograph. Another important factor is taking care of the artifacts. Elizabeth and Scout are busy washing artifacts as the day winds down to a close. If you’re interested in seeing our progress, come see us soon!

Measuring and mapping the dig progress — Brenna, Lauren, and Molly mapping the feature unit (units 1, 3, 5, and 6)

Three people in dig square — Heather, Tori, and Jorge scraping walls and preparing for a photograph in Unit 4

Bricks and other features in the ground — Feature found in units 1, 3, and 5

Two girls washing artifacts in bowls on the grass at Wylie — Elizabeth and Scout washing artifacts

20 June 2018

Brenna R.

Hi guys, it’s Brenna again! Today is a gorgeous day, with a nice breeze helping to cool things down a bit and luckily no rain. We spent this morning finishing up the mapping of units 1,3,5, and 6 as well as photographing and mapping the profile walls in unit 4. We’re now focusing on the feature in the northern set of units, where we’ve laid out another quadrant that will separate the feature into different areas so that it’s easier to excavate and sift through. So far today we’ve found what looks to be an old metal hook, which came from unit 1, and shards of glass from unit 3. As we dig deeper into the feature our findings will help us piece together how the Wylie’s filled in the greenhouse and evidence of what they could have stored there as well. Unit 4 is doing Munsell’s of the profile walls that they mapped earlier, making sure that everything is identified and recorded as well as it possibly can be. As we dig deeper we’re going to uncover even more information about the Wylie’s and their greenhouse, so come by and see our progress!

Heather and Hannah taking Munsell’s of unit 4’s profile walls

Liz, Heather, and Hannah checking the Munsell colors

Pieces of brick and glass found in Unit 3

21 June 2018

Angel Mounds Field Trip

Hello everyone, it’s Elizabeth again and today we started off the morning a little different than usual. Instead of our typical meet at the 7-8 am time frame, we met at 8:30. Extra sleep time! The purpose of this late meet up was our field trip to Angel Mounds in Evansville, Indiana. Just as a little background context for later, I’m actually from Evansville, so when we found out that our field trip was to Angel Mounds I joked that I get to go home for a day. So about 8:45 we hopped in our IU official vehicles and began our two hour journey to the site. Molly and Liz were our two designated drivers for the day with Maclaren and Jorge as their respective copilots. Now I’m not sure how the ride in Molly’s car was, but in Liz’s car things got interesting with the Bluetooth and radio really fast. In the long run, we gave up on either for most of the trip and listened to podcasts and npr on someone’s phone.

When our two hour trip was up, we all grouped together in parking lot of Angel Mounds waiting for another few minutes for it to open. As we waited, Liz gave us a nice in depth explanation about the site and its archaeological and historical background. She told us about how the mound you see off to the right when you turn in to the parking lot is called a Woodland mound and how it’s different from the other mounds at the Angel site, how Angel is connected to other sites such as Cahokia in Illinois, as well as the contemporary descendants of the peoples that lived at Angel.

Once the museum opened, we went inside and explored everything it had to offer, from interactive displays to physical Angel artifacts. Having grown up in Evansville I had been many times to Angel Mounds and seen this museum each time I went, so while it wasn’t completely new to me there was a pleasant sense of nostalgia I could share with my group. And even more exciting were the new exhibits at the end of the museum that I had yet to see.

By far the most amazing part about the trip was going outside and climbing to the top of Mound A. The view was absolutely beautiful! During our trek to the mound, we stopped along the way for more tidbits of information from Liz. In particular the idea that these mounds were perfectly aligned with specific phases of the moon was fascinating. Brenna joked that she can’t even find North on her own, so it’s impressive that they were so exact in their calculations. However, my favorite discussion point of the day was by far the future of Angel and the collaboration with descendants and the repatriation that is planned. You don’t often think about the multifaceted abilities of a place until you are presented with them head on and this was definitely the case here. This is especially true when you grow up and are told a place is one thing, like a historic site, but later learn it means so much more to others such as Angel’s descendants.

group photo — Group photo at Angel Mounds

After our amazing adventure to Mound A, we stopped by the gift shop and got caught up in all of the friendship bracelets, arrow points, books and dream catchers to the point where nearly everyone bought something. To finish out the day, we went to a pizza place called Turoni’s and I learned there was a location of this place I’ve never been to! It was a great end to the day, a way to wind down and just talk with everyone and make plans for our week left at the Wylie House site. Well, thanks for tuning in and keeping up with our progress! We really love the community involvement we’ve been receiving, so please keep it coming!

22 June 2018

Lauren S.

Hi guys, it’s Lauren again! Today has been an exciting one despite the weather. This morning we had 6 volunteers join us in our continuing excavations of Unit 3, Unit 4, and Feature 1. This group was made up of a previous vounteer José, Maclaren’s grandmother, and a team from the Children’s Museum’s archaeology lab incuding my aunt. My aunt was able to help me dig in the small unit Brenna and I started in the northeast quadrant of Feature 1 earlier this week. Being a conservator at the Children’s Museum, she enjoyed learning how to excavate artifacts instead of processing them. While community involvement is awesome, getting to show off your work to your family is pretty great too. We were able to dig through the orange clay we’ve been associating with Feature 1, a silty brown layer of soil we named Layer 4, and are now on to Layer 5.

About an hour before the volunteers left, it started pouring down rain. After a mad dash to the barn, and a few nasty slips in the mud, the volunteers started to wash some artifacts. While they washed, the rest of us continued to fill out the paperwork associated with our units and features. Paperwork is much harder than it sounds and almost always leaves us with questions as we try to interpret the quick notes we take in order to fill in missing information. Once we got our paperwork sorted, we got back to digging. Hopefully we will find more artifacts to add to our exciting finds this morning: a marble and a piece of purple transferware. Come out and visit us next week as we enter the home stretch of our excavation!