Anyhow, I'm back, six hours of digging. Two holes, sorted and sifted. The first hole was not very good, although we did find a great pottery shard, decorated with little "pinholes" in a rhythmic pattern.

This land was once cultivated, and being that most of the bits of pottery are being found up in the upper layers of the site, breakage is massive. The piece I found was smallish, but another pair of diggers found a couple of adjacent pieces that were substantially larger. Although still too small to determine what the object might have looked like en toto.

Northeast woodland Indians decorated pottery by pressing objects against it before it hardened. A ribbed appearance may have been thin strips of grasses, sinew, or other "stringy" mattter.

Our second hole was more productive, and it was located back towards the better artifact reagion. However, the pottery shards were less defined. We found scraping tools, and many pieces of quartz knapping work, and a few of chert. A couple jaspar pieces (traded, I believe, from Pennsylvania) were found.

Our team leader told us about the difference between Southwest and Northeast archaeology -- off in the relic-rich southwest, the archaeologists tend to toss out pottery artifacts if they aren't painted, or at least markedly decorated. I guess ours here are more fragmented.

A good arrowhead was found by one of the other teams, made of a very clear quartz.

I'll be back shortly with a photo or two.