Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Pottery Everywhere

It has been a busy fall as we work away on the Heckleman site collection.  As our faithful readers know, we recovered quite a bit of ceramics last summer.  Intern Catie G. spent three weeks reconstructing and measuring one particularly large vessel from Feature 11-09.  Here she is working diligently on her project.
This was the vessel from the "pottery cascade" described in an earlier blog posting (6/24/11).   Contrary to our hopes in the field, this vessel was not complete, but Catie was able to reconstruct a decent portion of this large, thick pot.  It had at least two thick lug handles which were attached around the shoulder area and a distinctive fabric-marked exterior surface.  Unfortunately, we recovered no datable material from Feature 11-09, so we cannot say exactly how old this vessel is.  I would suspect it dates to the Early Woodland period, perhaps 2,000 or more years ago, based on its form.