Saturday, June 20, 2009

Final Week's Big Push

We have started our final week at the dig.  This week will be so busy that things will get frantic at times.  All the bustle is caused by the two main activities during this period. 

First, Jessica will lead the students to finish all their excavation record-keeping.  This includes all the steps that they don't show on CSI- drafting profile and plan drawings of excavation units, making final photographs of each unit, writing draft reports about the stratigraphic layers and features in each excavation area, and finishing initial artifact processing, cataloging, and inventory so the bags can be packed and transported back to Michigan Tech's Industrial Archaeology Lab.

During all the recording and processing, we'll also have lots of visitors to the site and several public programming activities.  This is the best time to visit a dig, since we are at the maximum extent of excavation for the season.  People can now see all the architecture and features that we've been able to expose.  We kicked off our public programming last night with a talk in Parowan. I'll write more about that talk in a post soon.  We have lectures and site tours all this week, including Michigan Tech Alumni today, a brown bag and lecture in Cedar City on Monday, then the Sons of the Utah Pioneers, the Boy Scouts, some type of event with visitors in town for the glider festival.

We will try to get more blog posts up
 this weekend, and I am going to send students to the library so they can write.  We have many interesting details to report.  In the meantime, here are some photos of people and scenes from the dig and around Parowan:

Mark at the screen.

Jessica and Frank talking things over.
Andy brushing off masonry.
Mike starting his last unit.
Renée is now fearless with the mattock.

Me at the screen, helping with somebody's unit.

The desert has been in bloom for weeks now.  This has been such a cool and moist summer, any plants that can flower have been blooming for weeks.  I've been saving pictures of flowers and will post an entire blog entry with those pics!

The weather has given us some sublime scenes.  Here is one looking north from Parowan toward Beaver.
Parowan is full of farms and ranches.  We have become used to having our morning commute delayed by cattle or sheep drives.  The ranchers are moving their herds to summer pastures in the mountains, passing our camp on their trip.

 

 

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