When it rains on a dig...

Please forgive my absence in the blogosphere. We've been on the move constantly since leaving the dig and I'm now playing catchup!

During the four days when it rained and we weren't able to dig, we got to help with a few other tasks. Several people sorted through pieces of broken box and roof tile looking for evidence of maker's stamps. The craftsmen had their own stamps and these identifying marks are very useful to archeologists.

 

Others cleaned and sorted through pottery sherds (shards are glass, which was new information for me) and looked for characteristics such as textures, patterns, lips, bases, or spouts, to help identify what they once were.

 

 

Alex Croom, a world-renowned Roman pottery expert, received help from Arlene (Arizona) and Suzanne (Hawaii) on identifying pottery.

 

In some cases, there were enough pieces found, belonging to an individual piece, that they could be glued together.

(Chris, who is 18 and from London, is attempting to glue sherds together and not having much luck!)

 

I was given an assignment that I thoroughly enjoyed -- working as a research assistant to our supervising archeologist. My rainy days were filled with working in one of the offices (warm and dry!) with the computer database of finds to search for evidence of "female finds" in the barracks. He is working on a journal article, which he gave me a draft to read, about the suspected presence of women in certain men's barracks during particular time periods. These finds would have been hair pins, bangles, spindle whorls (heavy weights that add momentum when spinning yarn on a spindle) or earrings made of bone, jet, silver, and gold. I searched by material, then by object, barrack number, and occupation period. My spreadsheet skills were minimal prior to this assignment and after four days of doing this, I was whizzing through filters and sorts! My supervisor was so impressed that several times on the last day he said, "While you are in there, would you mind looking for...?" I was pleased on our closing day, when reviewing our team's accomplishments, that he highlighted my efforts and that they had brought him much closer to finishing his work, perhaps by as much as a year. I never thought I'd come home from this with increased computer skills!



 

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