| Entry: | 30th June 2007 - Day Five aka Day of the Clay Balls
I had lost my voice over the course of the past few days and today it returned a lot, which was a relief! I contiued work on the feature for much of the morning with Alex, planning the mudbricks and mortar (14227 &14228 respectively) and the cut of the grave (14234). This was somewhat arbitrary as it was so difficult to distinguish. After finishing we began work on clearing the surrounding area down to a relatively arbitrary lower surface point - ie, removing 14217. This produced the third clay ball of the day. Rather annoyingly, someone appears to have sat on it resulting in it reaching the finds lab in pieces this afternoon. Still, as the balls are most likely diagnostic of late neolithic presence on th west mound it is very pleasing to find some!
I also found a some infant human bones and managed to creep out Peter by orientating them on my own arms. It is still very exciting handling human remains, which is perhaps a very morbid thing to say but there it is! It is strange to think that what I hold in my hand was once a part of another human being, and the thought of some future archaeologist casually brushing soil from my bones in the future is a little disconcerting! Nonetheless, I never expected to be in so much contact with skeletons and I am keen to do some work on human remains in the future. The trouble is, I am also very keen to get some geo-archaeological experience in Catal too as this would be incredibly helpful for my next term's work. With three weeks left of digging I suppose it's perfectly possible I shall have opportunity to do both and not feel like I am missing out.
Alex was joking with me earlier about how in one week I have gained so much more confidence in saying what I see in the soil profiles and so on., which has made me think on the matter some more. It does feel like I have been digging for much longer than a week and I am better at spotting things now than before. I wonder if the learning curve when it comes to these things is like learning to row - huge improvement in the initial few weeks followed by months/years of consolidation and little discernable change for the better! I want to be a competent field archaeologist. It is very different working on site in comparison to working in the library at university. I enjoy both aspects of archaeology but I think as I have far less formal teaching in excavation it is very important to capitalise on this experience. I am still very scared of making some huge error - tales of "bad archaeology" perpertrated here and on other sites told in the evenings have not helped with this! They were very funny though
Thoughts for today - determination. Unit 14217 is potentially very large and complex and I am looking forward to working my way through it over the coming week and seeing what I can find!Entered By: KH |
