We're back...2011 field season begins!

The 2011 University of West Florida Colonial Frontiers field school is now underway, and we're pleased to inaugurate a new series of entries to our annual project blog. With a team of 14 students enrolled in the undergraduate section, 3 graduate student supervisors, and graduate student field director Danielle Dadiego, along with principal investigators John Worth and Norma Harris, we have successfully re-cleared the 2010 excavation area from all the growth that had sprouted since last year, re-established our mapping grid, and laid in and begun excavating five new excavation units as of Wednesday of our first week. Our goals for this summer include finally tracing out the complete outline of the large post-on-sill wall-trench structure which we have been following for two seasons (and which we suspect is the 1760 cavalry barracks), exploring the architectural features associated with at least three overlapping post-in-trench wall-trench structures under multiple clay caps just south of the possible barracks structure (this area may be the convento and/or church area of the mission), and continuing to explore the possible Apalachee residential area which produced multiple posts and smudge pits dating to the mission period last year, and which contains an as-yet undefined brick-filled trench feature that we hope to clarify this year. More details will follow in subsequent posts, but the images below will give a general sense of our work at the site so far.

















Above, supervisors Patty McMahon, Lindsey Cochran, and Colin Bean work on setting up the total station for mapping, with Norma Harris looking on.

















Students Alesia Hoyle, Michelle Pigott, Phillip Mayhair, and Joe Stevenson learning total station procedures from Lindsey Cochran.






















Marie Burrows and Katie Brewer lay out an excavation unit with Colin Bean looking on.

















Students Brady Swilley, Rachael Mead, Sarah Bennet, Ashley Geisel, and John Hueffed look on as Patty McMahon explains the strategy for re-excavating an unfinished unit from the 2010 field season.

















Students Jonathan Harpster, Marie Burrows, and Ralph Hosch beginning excavation in a new unit.

















Field Director Danielle Dadiego explains mapping to students Nick Simpson and Ralph Hosch.

















Colin Bean goes above and beyond, bending a tree out of the way of the total station.