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Kawatiri, Westport - Day 10

28 February 2008

Today's excavations were primarily focused on defining the features that have been exposed on the surface of Layer 3.

An excavation unit which has reached the top of Layer 3. Note the contrast of light and dark soil which marks the features. Photo: Otago University

We started by carefully excavating the edges of the feature so that they stood out against the pale sand of Layer 3. They were plotted with the total station and then drawn by hand onto plan drawings. Then they were excavated to identify their function.

This involved either emptying half of each feature (known as half-sectioning) or fully excavating them. In all cases, an electronic record is kept of fill content, inclusions (such as fire cracked rock, charcoal etc), and depth. A drawing and photo was made of each feature at the completion of their excavation.

When features are exposed in plan view it is often difficult to identify what they are and what they might have been used for. But when they are excavated or half-sectioned it is often possible to get a very good idea of what their function was. In the southern areas several features that initially looked fairly unpromising, turned out to be deep, and well defined cooking pits or umu. A number that were only represented by faint stains of the surface of Layer 3 were actually large, deep postholes that may well have supported quite substantial structures.

Left: A typical fire feature found on the site - note the fire-cracked rock. Right: A half-section of a fire feature showing fire-cracked rocks and a dark charcoal lens. Photos: Otago University

In the far southern excavation area where a small quantity of faunal remains were recovered over the last few days, further quantities of bone from dog, sea mammal and moa were excavated today.

The northern excavation areas have seen an overall reduction in artefacts with depth, but an increase in features. There was an exception to this in one unit in which a dense collection of both obsidian and nephrite flaking debris was found just above the interface with Layer 3. Features found in these northern excavation areas include two possible hearths and a number of postholes. In addition some charred moa bone and a number of unusual flaked argillite cobbles were found.

As we found in our experiments with the fluxgate gradiometer in 2004, nearly every feature containing fire cracked rock and charcoal that we have found this year, is clearly shown on the fluxgate gradiometer plan.

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For questions about the Kawatiri excavation, contact archaeology@historic.org.nz