This is Koster South, where we worked every day. A square was excavated by using the big shovels to skim across the surface of the dirt, not by digging straight down. Our dig leader got really mad if you did that. The skimmed dirt was put in a bucket, which was subsequently dumped onto the screening tables. This dirt was then worked across the screen to uncover any good-sized pottery bits or stone flakes. These items were placed in a cloth bag which was tagged with the square coordinates, date, etc.
Depth measurements were taken and recorded every day. When something major was found, it was mapped on a piece of paper before it was removed from the square.
The first picture is the original dig location, Koster North. Theodore Koster, the man who owned the farm, had no problems with the archeology team digging up his field -- as long as they put all the dirt back when they were finished! At the time, they never expected to find more than a few artifacts from a Mississippian village or two, but as they kept digging, they kept finding more and more things. I think they dug down more than 30 feet before they reached the bottom of the layers containing Archaic-period artifacts. But obviously, they did as they promised, and now you can't even tell anything happened there.
Koster North | 
The square that I worked on with the screening table behind it. The guy in the hat was one of my co-workers for the first few days. | 
Tarps were put over the wooden frames to keep the sun off of us. |
The potsherd I found in its discovery position. | 
I'm not sure anybody knew what that white crumbly stuff was. |
Go to Part 5: Artifact Washing.
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