| Entry: | Since my last diary entry my days have been filled with skeletons, and 'getting stuck into the stiffs' one after the other, and with no sign of coming to an end. This has not been boring at all, rather frustrating as the earth around the bones is rock solid and especially near the wall it is practically impossible to excavate the bones without breaking them - the soil is rock hard, and the bones are very fragile, sometimes even in the slightly softer areas (still hard) simply appearing as bone dust. For all this though, 5 skeletons (11647, 11649, 11494, 11493) have now come out the ground in reasonable shape, including today 11657, F.2050 - a juvenile burial with 3 anklets, 1 on the right leg and 2 on the left. These are the first burial goods to emerge from the 'burial pit', and it's nice to have something to show for the last weeks work apart from damaged human bones. Although no cuts have been visible in the soil, they must have been present because the bodies have been truncating each other, so they must have been buried over a period of time. We still have no idea how this sequence of events relates to the main in-fill of the house, although this is the aim of the next few days work. Roddy has come back to the burials to help me out, and today excavated and removed 11655, the 6th skeleton. Tomorrow we will both work on removing the next burial, which appeared as Laurie and myself were removing the juvenile burial. We will also continue to remove a makeup layer which appears to cover both the entire house floor surface, and the burial fills. Hopefully this will reveal a cut of some sort in the lower makeup fills. All the burials have their own feature numbers as well, in sequence of removal these are 1344, 1345, 1347, 1348, 2050, 1349.Entered By: Alex Pryor |
