| Entry: | End of a long week of hacking midden/dump deposits 4824, 4836, 4837 and 4838. These are still different in some respects from later middens but are probably similar.One idea - maybe they are secondary off-site middens where material which has already been dumped in a midden elsewhere is moved in some later stage as dumps to raise the height of area at the side of the mound which were liable to flooding? The artefacts are rather different from normal at least in terms of amounts - lots of bone, a few pieces of clay ball, a little stone, a little very small obsidian, no / very little pottery, some shell. Are we witnessing changes in material culture or changes in refuse disposal patterns. Also am beginning to think that burnin (4826) is more significant than I thought as it appears to mark a fairly major transition and might be associated with the burial. Cleaned up and photographed the southern section which is really quite impressive, will draw sections with Serap then remove a little more of the deep sounding fill.
Things are a bit frustrating on the labour side of things, it looks like we will have lots of not terribly useful people here over the next couple of months but not enough workmen-women to move dirt, seive dirt, wash finds and process heavy residue. Unless this is sorted it will seriously slow down progress and greatly reduce any conclusions that we can come do if we dont get all the material dry seived and the heavy residue sorted. It is already impacting on what we can prioritise as there is no point in looking at units which won’t be fully available to the specialists for another week.Entered By: Craig Cessford |
