The Beginning of the End

June 10, 2012

This is the last week! It has been a long three weeks, but I think we're all a little shocked that it's almost over. We have made a LOT of progress over the course of the field school, excavating a large portion of the oven area. We have begun to understand how the French built their buildings here at Fort Tombecbe, and it will help us to better excavate the other parts of this site that we have yet to get to. I look forward to the next dig at this site, if I am able to be involved, because I believe that the next step in the excavation will be finding the French barracks, which we believe to be just across the gully from where we have been digging these past three weeks. It will be interesting to see if some of the construction techniques we've seen at the oven area are present there as well. And, of course, it will be interesting to see what we find there. In the wake of Community Day, I think we are finally understanding the things we've been doing and what the units we've been excavating actually mean in understanding what life was like for these French marines, and how they survived out here in the wild west of Alabama, far away from supplies inMobile. Telling other people about what we've found and showing them first-hand what we've been doing there on the site really brought into perspective just how much we've gotten done in so short an amount of time, and how much more there is yet to do. Just in this week to come, we will finish the units we've been working on and plot out the section of the oven that we have uncovered, and I'm sure at least one unit will be opened up across the gully in search of the barracks so that we will have a starting point when we come out to the site after this field school. Perhaps we will get lucky and find the trench of a wall, which would give us an idea of where to look. I have no doubt that this site has much more to tell us and that it will take years to find it all out. I'm glad I had a chance to work at this site and I hope I am about to come back the next time work is done here. But that's something to worry about later. Now it is time to rest and get ready for another week of digging at Fort Tombecbe!

Alex