As we removed the fill from the southern half of this feature, Allison Z. found a complete Early Woodland stemmed point. This small, thick point is similar to the type called Leimbach Stemmed in northern Ohio. It is made from the distinctive Flint Ridge chert from eastern Ohio.
As we wound down our work on Friday, Marcia R. and Allison uncovered a large fragment of a Leimbach Cordmarked vessel just a few centimeters south of where the point was found. The vessel fragment can be seen to the right of the point and at the edge of the pit in the image below.
The discovery of sherds of similar ceramics in midden deposits nearby suggest that the latter are contemporary with Early Woodland features like 11-39 and were deposited after the filling of these pits. In all these areas, numerous post molds and other features have been detected within, or penetrating through, the midden staining, which indicates that structures were constructed after the midden deposits were laid down. As yet, no clear post mold patterns of houses or other structures have been recognized; but the sheer volume of post molds is impressive. Did some of this building activity take place during all three occupations or mostly during the final one in the Late Prehistoric period? Are there any Middle Woodland structures out there? I don't think we will answer that question during this field season, and perhaps only after we have time to sort out the hundreds of post molds by shape and size to look for recognizable patterns. But who knows? We still have a week to go!
