Yesterday we embarked on a small excavation on the shores of Womens Bay. We'll be excavating for 8 days and hope to uncover a 4-5 thousand year old structure of some sort, and learn what people were doing there in the distant past.
We found the site on a survey of the area a couple of years ago when we dug a number of exploratory holes in the area looking for archaeological sites. In one of those holes we found a layer of charcoal-stained gravel at the bottom right above the glacial till, an old post hole dug into the till, and both were capped by a layer of 4000-year-old volcanic ash. We also found nothing in the other holes that we dug nearby. So we know that there is a small site, probably where people only lived a short while, and that it is older than 4000 years.
That's not much to know! So yesterday when we started the excavation I was very happy when Alex found a ground slate lance fragment. This type of artifact typically was used to hunt sea mammals 4-6 thousand years ago. An auspicious start!
Patrick
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| The charcoal-stained gravel that we found at the bottom of the 2019 test pit |
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