Like this:

And so we march on! Fresh off of our coin discovery (which I posted about here), we were excited to keep up the digging in that area. But since we were expecting a large crew in the forthcoming days, then the priority became to open up a new area so that there’d be space enough for everyone to dig.

The geophysical machine we’d used, the EM-38B, had indicated that more of the feature lay to the south of where we were digging, so we decided to put in a 0.5 metre expansion in that direction.

Our newest expansion, D, expands 50 centimetres south of the 2008 unit, A.

We staked it out, triangulated it in, and then corded it off, ready to remove the sod.

The new unit expansion is furthest away from the camera.

Another benefit to expanding in that direction is that we’ll be able to take away the slumped in profile of A, which looks very crumbled due to having been left open for a few seasons. A cleaner wall will allow us a much better look at the stratigraphy of the unit.

Another view of the expansion to the south.

Becki and I began to take the sod off to prepare for a crew of members of the public the next day. As we did so, however, Becki came face to face with an army built for a single purpose: to destroy the world of archaeologists. Ants have been a problem in this area since we started work, but we’d clearly hit on one of the their great metropoleis, as hundreds of thousands of them came out of the unit once the sod came off.  We tried to hurriedly gather them and take them to the backdirt pile, but when they realised they were being attacked, they began to swarm. We have no photos from that encounter, but I suspect that it looked something like this.

Anyway, once the ants had been defeated, we got the sod off and we’re ready for more digging.

Philip, Shannon and Amy dig in the expansion.

One of the interesting aspects of the expansion is that, while the sod was particularly deep here, immediately under it we get very clear distinctions showing up between the stone feature area and what’s on either side of it. Lots of stone immediately starts jutting out at us as well.

Another shot of digging in the expansion.

Elsewhere in the unit, the northwest corner of our feature is getting more interesting, with more wood showing.

Wood showing up in the corner area.

Things are coming together, but there are still so many questions. Luckily, we still have another week or so to answer at least some of them.

An overall view of where we're at.

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