Daily Log 2. 21. 2005

The second day of work gave everyone insight into the labor that goes into having an archeological site. After I worked on the area that I had worked on the previous day, I began to drudge out 5 cm, then 5 more centimeters, then 10 centimeters worth of loose soil. The reasoning behind taking a small layer off at a time is to observe the possible where-abouts of bones, pottery, and other artifacts that might lie in the earth.

After a while, digging can really be tiring. I was very eager to find something underneath all the dirt so I ignored the hand cramps and kept going. As a result of my hand hurting just a tad, I was shown new techniques on digging, scraping, and clearing away the soil, which benefited me greatly in the end. (I had no idea there were various ways of extracting soil from the ground!) By the end of the day, the whole level I was working on was taken down a few inches to give way for new digging.

Directly after mid-afternoon tea, we took a trip over to another archeological site to compare and contrast with ours. The other site had been long turned into a museum where visitors from all over the world go to see an ancient neo-lithic burial site. It was really neat to think about the people at this site and the people at the site we work at. They weren’t very far from one another so could they perhaps have known each other? Did they live similar lives? What were they like before they died? So many questions can be conjured up in just looking at an archeological site. The only main difference I noticed between the sites was that the skeletons in the museum site were placed very close to one another, where as in the site we work at the burials are much farther apart.

Once we were done examining the other site/museum we headed back to the Inn for dinner, rest, and relaxation. The day was long, but very interesting, informative, and exciting. New digging presumes tomorrow which means tomorrow may very well be the day I uncover the burial I am so desperately searching for.

Have a NICE day!

Jamie