An exciting commute

The water was a bit higher than yesterday on the way down, and we had to winch a couple of the 4-wheelers out of deeper mud, but we got to the site with not too much trouble.  We put a stick in a the high water mark so we could see what the ocean was doing and went to work on the structure.

Yesterday, the strong winds made water screening where we have to do it a pretty sure ticket to hypothermia, so we tried just dry screening on the beach in the shelter of the bluffs, and it worked well.

We made pretty good progress on the excavation.  More logs were exposed in both of the parallel log features (fallen walls?).   The area between the logs is getting soft, and seems to contain a lot of animal bones, many of which are lying in a way suggesting they were tossed into a depression.  South of the southern logs, we uncovered what appears to be part of a plank floor, maybe for a tent, since it doesn’t seem deep enough for a house.  Next to, but apparently not on it, there was a cluster of ceramic sherds, including a large rim sherd.  This was right under an old looters pit, and their activity may have broken the pot.

Beside the logs, but again not on the plank floor, we found two arrow shafts, apparently associated with a strip of baleen, and a fragment of bird hide.  A couple of pieces of hide, one sewn, had been found just above this.  This could be the remains of a quiver, or possibly a work bag, since there was a ground slate knife blade fragment and a worked piece of chert nearby. We’ll continue there tomorrow.

We didn’t stay out as long as we might have, since the waves seemed to be coming higher up the beach.  It turned out to be a good thing.  Going back to town was a bit of an adventure for us, although only one of us got stuck, but even more so for a man & his son we met on the way.  They were trying to head out towing a trailer, and had gotten really stuck in a deep soft spot.  It looked like they had been there a while trying to get out.  We were able to get one of the 4-wheelers with a winch to where we could pull them out, and then waited until they got turned around and back on the town side.