Back in the field today and to our surprise/luck: no rain. We kept going on the excavation units that we had started last week to see what more we could find.
A little video to see first hand what the digging zone is like:
(In this video: Mark, Kitty, Andrew, Meghan, Evan, Jasmin and me filming.)
This is a view from the path next to these excavation units. After pulling a few of the softest pieces away from this log, we found some intact cans. It took quite a while to carefully remove the rotting log chunks and underneath was a variety of tin cans, a bottle, and a few pieces of Japanese rice bowls.
All hands on deck. Spencer K. was so excited to uncover the tin cans that a bunch of us helped out removing the pieces of log (again, carefully). Kitty, Dini, Andrew and myself all got our gloves on and pitched in...I was so nervous to do this task as the cans underneath are so fragile, I didn't want to damage them by accident.
Voila: all the hard work of log removal paid off. Tin cans galore...see that sliver of rounded ceramic? That's a rice bowl piece. We actually found another portion of that same original bowl in the neighbouring excavation unit.
Most of the time when working in an excavation unit, you are allowed to tell people to stay out of your area (to protect your work)....but often, the work needing to be done (in this case, a log removal that runs through 3 units) required cooperation to complete the task.
That green bottle is a really great find as it seems to be a hand blown glass piece, meaning it is most likely a bit older than most of the bottles we have found. Most bottles have seams on the sides (including modern plastic ones...next time you buy a bottled water, check for seams. I never noticed them before Bob pointed it out to me). This bottle is just made from one molten piece of blown glass by hand which is much harder to do.
Mark took this lovely close-up shot of the tin can midden area...you can get a better look at the rice bowl fragment here. It's not often we find this many cans in (more or less) one piece.
This rice bowl came out of the same rotting log area as the tin cans. It's nearly intact, just missing a chunk from one side. Bob says it's the first bowl he's seen with designs like that on it.
As you can see in this close-up of one of the tin cans we pulled out, it's falling apart really fast. Matter of fact, Spencer K. called Mark over to take a photo of a label on a can he had just uncovered and before the picture was snapped, the label virtually disintegrated.
Evan was excavating up the path (an area we think might have been where the cabins once stood) and found some pieces of an old stove. Maybe it was used for heating the cabin or as a very basic cooking area? There were some chunks of old leather boot mixed in with the stove pieces as well.
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