It's a beautiful, sunny day in Vancouver and a great day to start excavation! Today the Field School students began removing layers of dirt from the site of an unidentified Village house. In the above photo, Washington State University student Susan Ji (foreground) and Portland State University student Anuhea Naeole (background) screen our first buckets of excavated sediment.
At Fort Vancouver, we use quarter-inch screens nested inside eighth-inch screens. Screening dirt through the quarter-inch screen helps us find larger objects, while the eighth-inch screen catches smaller artifacts. No artifacts were found today, but we've only just begun!
Field School students also learned how to use optical levels today. In the photo below, you can see Portland State student Kate Damon (left) learning to use the level with the help of T.A. Caitlin Wichlacz. The optical level helps us to more accurately set the locations of excavation units, record our level depths, and point provenience (pinpoint the locations of) artifacts.
