13 August, 2008:
Note from Dr. E:
Dr Ben Fitzhugh, one of the project Principal Investigators, and I discussed the option of him submitting a guest journal entry and we decided that the best candidate entry was actually from his field journal from last summer. We think it gives a pretty neat, and unique, insight into the thought processes we go through while we are excavating a site. This particular entry was made towards the end of our stay on NW Shiashkotan Island, at the Drobnyye site. One of the large house pits we documented was on the very tip of a peninsula of land, with a 3-4 m deep "notch" separating it from the main part of the terrace. The Ainu were known to occasionally establish defensive positions on landforms like this, so we wanted to investigate whether the "notch" was a natural feature or if it was anthropogenic (made by people).
I've included a PDF of Ben's scanned field journal pages, plus detailed scans of two of the figures from his field journal. --Dr. E
Beginning of Journal Entry: See Notes on P. 27 WWII Trench Section--@ 15 meters north of Unit 3
Strat, Sample #, depth b.s. [below surface, in cm], Description A 0-17 Veg Mat B 1 17-17.5 top tephra C 17.5-21 D 2 21-22 2nd tephra--white E 3 22-24 possible tephra--brown F 4 24-25 coffee colored tephra G 25-33 archaeological sediment--charcoal and flakes H 5 33-34 light beige tephra below black lens I 34-36 dark brown--possible cultural fill wash J 36-40 orange brown sense sandy sediment 40 base of excavation
6 Aug 2007: Yesterday afternoon Mike finished Unit 4 finding that the underlying matrix is a mixture of marine deposit and decomposing bedrock. I looked around the sides of the terrace and saw other exposures with rounded beach cobbles and I have come to the conclusion that the top +/- meters of the 34 meter terrace is marine deposit built over large volcanic bedrock units as follows: