This past Saturday was an exciting day for us here at El Polín Spring. We were invited to participate in the Tennessee Hollow Watershed Day, an event sponsored by the Presidio Trust. The event was an opportunity for the public to learn about the watershed’s natural and cultural resources, and to comment on alternatives being explored to enhance the watershed and improve public access. About 200-300 people visited our excavation that day, and we had a great time sharing our research and experiences. Most of our excavation units were open to view, and we exhibited some of the artifacts we’ve recovered in the past three weeks.

A primary focus of our project is the public interpretive program. We’ve developed several tools to help bring the site to the public and the public to the site, from this website, to brochures, to the large interpretive panel we’ve set up on our excavation site. Public feedback on our project is an integral part of its success, and one of our goals this season is to learn how we can better communicate our project’s goals, methods, and findings to the public.

One reason why we encourage visitors to the site and to our webpage is because their perspectives and questions often help us to interpret material in new and different ways. For example, we can’t always identify every artifact that we recover. Our artifact of the week is this corroded metal object that you see in the picture on the right. Last Saturday at the Watershed Day, we asked visitors to tell us what they thought it might be, and got answers from a child’s truck, to a wagon wheel, to an old roller-skate! Do you have any idea what it could be? Please post it in our online guestbook!