Oct. 6th
 
Trevor watches as April Kamp-Whittaker, a Crow Canyon intern, shows how to throw darts with an atlatl. Trevor flashes some sweet devil-horns as Kellam gets ready to throw. Trevor chucking a dart. This is what archaeologists do while waiting to spring into action and liberate golden idols from Peruvian temples.
   
  Tucker about to yard one off. There was a plastic turkey about 40 feet away...I think we managed to hit it once.  
[Becky]
Today was sunny and clear. We started @ the site around 9ish. Kellam finished his cliff face map and then worked on flagging all the diagnostic sherds and tools in the general site. Trevor and Katie analyzed our 4 midden sample units (Trevor-lithics, Katie-sherds) before Katie headed off to join everyone else @ Cougar Cub [5MT 1690]. I worked on mapping, finishing up from yesterday, Rubble Mound 4 and the sample units. Then I started mapping all the diagnostic sherds and tools Kellam was flagging. After recording the samples Trevor worked on recording all the tools Kellam was flagging.

There are a lot of diagnostic sherds at this site, as well as a significant # of these groundstones that could be pendants but some are thick and triangular shaped. We think they might be game pieces.

[Trevor]
I found a large quantity of fine grained sandstone that had been ground very smooth. Many of the pieces were a boomerang shape. Kellam and I thought they were some type of game piece or pendant of sorts. But why are they here? Were people playing games here or are they grave goods? These, combined with all the nice pottery make me think it was some sort of burial. Or it may have been a spot where people traded or met up and had a social gathering, possibly playing games or trading the foreign pottery seen on site in the vicinity of a good water source.

I also found a lot of really nice hammerstones, the nicest I've seen yet. A lot of manos and possible metates (one definite). So this means some people were working here and living full time. We had 44 "nice" tools on the site and many other utilized and retouched items as well. This site is coming along but pretty slowly because none of us want to make mistakes.

I think there were a lot more structures here too, because there are:
1) Too much rubble for one 2 room block. And I think I've actually seen some other walls.
2) There is way too much trash/artifacts in the midden for the amount of people who would have lived in the visible structure.
-also, there are no middens for the alcove rooms which leads me to believe they were storage. These things combined with the large amount of rock art, of which I would like to know if any other places exist, has me really puzzled over what went on here.

[Tucker]
So we moved up to Cougar Cub alcove [5MT 1690] to begin the mapping/recording process. We began by flagging artifacts and trying to find the midden. I found 6 corn cob pieces under an overhang to the S of the dwelling.

Katie, Seth and Chelsea began by mapping the site, and I hiked to the rim to see if there is any evidence of structures, there wasn't, but it's a great view from the point.

After lunch, Ruth and I recorded a swath of the midden until we had 260 sherds and it turned out to be about a quarter of the midden.

Lots of sherds on the site, but a noticeable lacking of lithic materials. Once the midden sample was done I outlined the midden and site boundary with pin flags. I began to go through the rest of the sit4e and double flag diagnostic sherds and FLT's outside of our sample area. I got the whole midden flagged and half of the general site before we had to leave.

There are a lot of diagnostic sherds, most all are PIII with a lot of them being Mesa Verde. The other group keeps getting closer but still not finishing. They have been working on that site for 4 days, hopefully they will finish by lunch tomorrow b/c we need help @ the next cliff dwelling.

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