Digging at the Carter Robinson mound site for the past week and a half, we have come across many artifacts and features. The most exciting find today was the post holes of past structures. We are not exactly sure of the use of the structure, but we have discovered charcoal and animal bones. This means that it could have been used for communal reasons, as a domestic structure, or a variety of other things. There are still many things yet to be discovered in order to know for sure the usage of this structure.

The other artifacts that we found include daub, ceramic sherds, and lithics. Daub is what the Native American’s used to build their house. They used as a type of sealant, much like our modern day mortar. It is orange in color and imprinted with the vines, posts, and other natural resources they used to construct their structures of their village. Ceramic sherds come in all shapes and sizes at this site. The most common type is shell and grit (small crushed rock) tempered with plain surface decoration. We are finding a mixture of cord mark decoration and plain surfaces, as well as variation between shell, grit, and grog (broken ceramic pieces reused in vessels) tempered. The sherds are very exciting to find, at least to me, because they can show us the variation that took place within the society. It should be noted that this can only be done after extensive research and analysis, therefore, we do not know any of the information regarding the sherds we have found this past week and a half. The lithics we are finding include flakes, drills, and projectile points. Many of the points are small and would have been used as arrow heads.