Exciting News from Wolf Village

Just in case you didn't know, Wolf Village is amazing. We're wrapping up the 2013 field school right now and because I don't feel like reading through any more of JEC's comments to the concluding chapter of my thesis, I figured I'd post an update. Anyways...

Remember the large oversized pit structure (Structure 2) we dug last year that we argue is communal?

Well, we went back this year to explore a feature we found at the southern end of our 2011 exploratory trench and found this cute little feature that we're interpreting as an antechamber to the structure.

We also continued excavation in a pithouse that we identified last year (Structure 8). It turns out that the pithouse is much bigger than we thought (nothing near the size of Structure 2, but still, large enough to be considered oversized even at Wolf Village where the residential structures are fairly large to begin with).

Especially with the large hearth, we're kinda thinking that this structure may be similar to Structure 57 at Five Finger Ridge, which Rich interpreted as an oversized pithouse that served both as a residence for someone of higher status and for some community purposes. But we'll have to do a lot more analysis before we can actually say if that's a decent interpretation or not.

We did some additional testing near Structure 2 and found this residential pithouse (Structure 9).

It's subrectangular with a pretty deep vent shaft (that was very awkward for me and Katie to excavate) and had several burned beams lying on the use surface. Hopefully we'll get some good dendro. dates off of them.

And last but not least, remember the adobe surface house (Structure 1) that Scott dug in 2009?

And that Katie continued excavation of in 2010 and discovered had a second room?

We thought a second room was pretty cool, but we've always wanted to trench to the north of Structure 1. We got distracted by Structure 2 until this year though. Good thing we finally did that trench, because we found a few more rooms...

Katie and I went out and excavated the three small storerooms, but other than that we only barely had time to trace the walls. (Sorry, I know the pictures aren't the easiest to see anything in.)

But you can see the outline of the tops of the walls of the two rooms from 2011 in the background of that last photo. Now we're thinking that Structure 1 has at least six rooms and possibly as many as 9 (we haven't quite figured out what's going on at the north end of the structure though, so those numbers could change completely by the next time we talk about this). Is it Heartbreak Hotel 2.0?

They might have taller walls, but we think we might have more rooms! 

Either way, more evidence of what we BYU people have all been saying for basically forever: that the Fremont are pretty dang awesome and complex.

So... for the fourth year running, we lied when we said it was the last year at Wolf Village. We're in for one more field season at least. But we're pretty excited about what we're finding!