 The site is on the Wake County side of what is now Falls of the Noose Reservoir. Fish Dam Road was a footpath used by Indians. This Indian footpath was an efficient way to go from a village on the Noose River to an Indian village that was on the Eno River near present day Hillsborough, North Carolina. That road was documented by our students during our NCSSM's many term during 2003 and 2004. In the fall of 2005, we had a significant drought here in Durham. I walked out into the lake bed right where our students had figured out where the road was where the road entered the reservoir and lo and behold the ground was littered with all these rocks and bricks. So I knew that we had the foundations of buildings there. Unfortunately at that time it started raining and the reservoir filled up and all the ruins were inaccessible again. The current drought that we're in right now has dropped the lake levels enough to where we can now see archaeological evidence of what is likely a past European colonial settlement right on the side of Fish Dam Road. It could be that we have a significant archaeological find here of one of the first European settlements in this area. Well what we're doing today is we're collecting a lot of different objects that are on the surface of the excavation. You can see the rust like that and that's a pretty good indication of it. They divide it up as you can see into squares. Each student goes into a square and picks up any objects that he might see glass or metal or pottery. We put in a brown paper bag and they collect all the paper bags and they have like a grid and everything's like mapped out on this grid how much is found where and how dense it is. That kind of shows them where things you know might have once been. In 1881 the water started backing up from a dam that they built way down there. The historical research that's been done by Joe Lyles and some of the other folks that have come out to talk with us here they suspect that it dates to the early 1800s. We have not found anything yet that contradicts that. I haven't had a chance to do any of the background research that I typically would do before I come out onto a site but I would guess at this point that we've got some kind of a main house or structure just over my shoulder here and then some ancillary buildings that wouldn't be uncommon in any kind of a plantation or even a small scale farmstead. I think that's what it is. Well today I found a lot of iron in this square. It appears that this area was where they made iron tools and things like that and over there I found things like ceramics and iron pieces and stuff like that. I found these two nails but they looked like they could be modern and this is rock that's very really old and the pottery seems to be more up-to-date with what we're looking at. All of the artifacts that the students help us collect out here are going to be taken back to one of our labs and processed, cleaned and then analyzed and cataloged. At that point we'll generate data tables that will get sent back to me so I can produce my compliance report. At the end are going to be put into storage containers and brought back to North Carolina where they'll be stored at the repository in Raleigh. It's been really interesting. I found a lot of interesting stuff and it's pretty neat to imagine what it was like a couple hundred years ago. Oh it's great for students to come out and enjoy the site and to see archeology. One of my first experiences with archeology was as a student actually in elementary school so I think it's great for them to get to come out. It's been really fun and interesting because I never knew what an archeologist did. It's a really awesome experience just getting to help the professionals uncover evidence of this area's past and the ancient peoples that used to live here. It is so freaking hot.