| Entry: | These last few days our pod has finally started to make visual changes to space 17/18/39/40. Josh from the human remains team has spent almost all his time with us, helping us to lift and document the last two skeletons, U20434 and U20419, in the grave cluster in space 40. This close collaboration has been valuable for both parts. The possibility to discuss and exchange information already in field helps us to notice details, define and focus on important questions and see problems from different perspectives. It will probably also reduce the discrepancies between our preliminary interpretations and conclusions and the later additions by the human remains team.
We still need to continue the excavation of space 40 and get more contextual information before we can proceed to any deeper analysis of the grave cluster. As there does not seem to be enough time left during this season, we have focused on establishing an internal relative chronology for the burials, documenting the graves as well as possible for the next team and pointing to some important patterns that are visible.
The next step, initialized a couple of days ago, was to define and plan the walls of spaces 17, 18, 39 and 40 and to start removing the infill in those spaces. The compound and complex U20481 in space 17/18 is the first to go. We try to keep the speed up using spades in a careful but violent way and sieving only one third of the material. Now it actually looks like we have done something during this season, which always is nice. It is also good exercise, mentally and physically, as the temperature is hovering somewhere above forty degrees centigrade and we are in the hottest, windless corner of the north shelter.
Even though the grave excavation seems slow, it feels like things have been going quite well this far. Our pod still only consists of two persons, but eleven intertwined burials are excavated and documented, the youngest generation of walls is defined and space 17/18 will hopefully be cleared before the season ends. I must say that I am lucky to work with Mateusz, who is not only a very nice young man, but also already a very good archaeologist despite only being a second year student.
The digital experiments have also been successful. I have planned the north shelter units with the total station in order to reduce the handdrawing workload and it seems to be working well. Nicolò and Matteo left yesterday, leaving me with the final wrapping up of our 3D modelling project but also with some fifty or so georeferenced and user friendly models of the different work stages and buildings in the north shelter, south shelter and TPC trench. We have also assisted in establishing a workflow for 3D documentation of graves, which is still to be evaluated.
By the way, is anyone else having problems assigning tags to the diary entries? It seems that mine are saved more or less randomly. Last time I got a jackpot, six "trench owl" tags in a row! |
