Getting Underway

We made a good start today to the 2007 excavation at the Danbury site. As has become our custom on the first day, much of the morning was spent clearing weeds and undergrowth from the grid stakes and repairing our perimeter fence. Following this, we divided our crew into four groups and set to work in two areas of Lot 4.

Let me say a word or two about our research goals for this season. Our main job is to complete our sampling of Lot 4 which is situated close to the center of what remains of the Danbury site since development began in 2003. There are areas on the extreme western and southern sides of Lot 4 which have not been adequately tested, and it is in these areas that we began. As before, our procedure is the excavation of 2.0 x 2.0 meter square units and the careful exposure of the subsoil to reveal whatever prehistoric features remain.

In the southern area of Lot 4, we are particularly interested in exposing more of a distinct line of post molds which were first identified in 2005 and traced for more than 14 meters last season. By this afternoon, Jim Bowers's crew had exposed a very nice extension of this line which crossed his unit from the northwest to southeast corners. Some of these post molds are marked by arrows in the image below.

This is very encouraging, since I suspect that this line represents part of a stockade fence that enclosed the Late Prehistoric period settlement located at the southern margin of the Danbury site. We will continue to follow this line to see where it goes.