Spring 2012 salvage in Ashley County

This strange object I'm holding is one of the most important things we found in our recent work on a site in Ashley County, Arkansas, that has been heavily looted, particularly during the last year.  It is known as a "Poverty Point Object" or "PPO", which means it is a lump of mud (silt/clay) shaped into a particularly form, then heated until it hardens into a rock-like object.  These PPOs were then heated and used to provide a more controlled heat source for cooking food and boiling water.  Why, you may ask?  Well, because these people didn't have many rocks to use for this purpose, and these people lived before clay pottery was available.  We've taken a number of y'all to the large site in northeastern Louisiana called "Poverty Point" (this has the very large bird shaped mound).  On this site we also found a number of arrow points (from a later occupation than the Poverty Point Culture), like the broken one in my hand:

We received help on this salvage effort from a number of people with the Arkansas Archeological Survey (a state agency) and the Arkansas Archeological Society (a volunteer group we belong to).  Below, we are sharing some dessert and vino with some of this crew, including UAM station archeologist Dr. Marvin Jeter (holding up Beth's artwork):

I took most of the week off, and spent a lot of time on the site when it wasn't raining--Hope and kids still had school to deal with.  However, the whole family got a chance to help on Saturday.  Below, Lyndie Mullins (daughter of a family friend) shows Kenny the fine art of screening:

Stephen, of course, knew what to do in a big pile of dirt--get muddy!

Below, Shelly Mullins helped with the screening, too:

These last few pictures were taken in a large pile of dirt left behind by the looters.  We believe they were looking for large, intact artifacts they could sell (illegally, since they didn't have permission to be digging on this privately owned site).  However, they did leave a lot of material behind, including many potsherds and a few small intact arrow points:

Below, Hope is helping to spread some of the dirt back onto the ground they dug up:

We also have been spending some quality time at home--below, Stephen and Beth are dancing to music we're enjoying on Pandora internet radio:

They even did a little slow dancing:

Our other big project over the last week or two has been to lay down an engineered (clickable) floor in our front room:

This floor may look like real wood, but it actually is a "picture" of wood that is printed onto a fiberboard backing, then cut into standard lengths and widths to simulate a true wooden floor.  Below, Draco inspects the near-final work:

We'd love to have real hardwood floors, but we don't want to lay down the plywood panel that would have to go in first so we could nail them down.  These floors "click" together like a jigsaw puzzle, and given that they come in individual, relatively unique "boards", we can stagger them and alternate the patterns so they look pretty close to real hardwood floors.  We're very happy with how this area turned out, and now look forward to laying laminate floors in our dining room and hallway.