| Entry: | First excavation diary of the UC Merced team.
We started to excavate the 17th of July. We are excavating in the east mound, south area, building 86, space 329.
Maurizio, Fabrizio, Carlos and I arrived one week before the excavation started. Maurizio's plan was to start scanning some structures using the Trimble time of flight laser scanner. The plan unfortunately was disturbed by the Trimble company that didn't respect the agreement with the University, and has not sent the scanner yet. Since we are optimistic persons, we are confident that the instrument will arrive soon. We used the first week to visit the site, read all the manuals for digitizing the excavation records, set the engines that we already had with us, and learn the "rules".
Wednesday 14/7 morning Justine, Llonel, Julia and Jonathan came. We had meetings with Maurizio and Shahina, and Professor Hodder brought everybody on site for a visit.
Thursday 15/7 Justine, Julia, Jonathan, and I started to set the Next Engine desktop triangulation laser scanners, and to scan objects. For Julia and Jonathan was the first time. Justine and Julia could reconstruct a human face pottery sherd (18218 X2). The reconstruction of artifacts is very challenging because of their small dimensions and very articulated shapes (especially that of figurines).
Maurizio, Fabrizio, Carlos and Llonel tried the Minolta triangulation laser scanner on site, but it didn't work because of the light conditions under the excavation area roof.
Between Friday and Saturday, thanks to Carlos and Patrik, who came Friday, we could fix the problem we had with the Minolta! They created a sort of tent with black fabric, a dark room for the scanner. It works now!
Saturday 17/7 Jonathan, Julia and Justine worked on the lab and all the others went on the mound. Once on site, we cleaned our digging area, we gave the number to our first unit (19100), and we documented everything. Chris (CA) was with us. He was very helpful and nice in supervising our work. Thanks to him we could become more confident with the documentation and the reflexive method.
We are excavating part of a midden which marks the abbandonment of building 86. The south, east and west borders of this midden are arbitrary and correspod to the excavation section. The midden was, in fact, partly excavated last year.
Our work consists in the traditional dig and documentation that goes in parallel with an experimental digital documentation. We are virtually reconstructing the stratigraphy. The idea is to virtually reconstruct the units while we remove them digging.
Sunday 18/7 we excavated (19100), a unit composed by three deposits of compact clay. We also started documenting (19101), a silty-clay midden fill moderately compact with en extention almost entirely corresponding to our excavation area. The unit presents a depression at the center.
Monday 19/7 we recognized, traditionally and digitally documented a cut fill in the south-west side of the midden (19102), and we started excavating it. We found rests of one figurine and other remains (animal bones, small stones, pottery sherds, shells, small pieces of plaster).
Today, 20/7/2010 we finished digging (19102), we documented the pit cut (19103) and we also documented and started excavating a fire spot fill located in the south of the area (19104).
The first 3D layer (19100) has been entirely post-processed and reconstructed by Fabrizio and Llonel. |
