Week Four

Week four is now coming to a close and I’m beginning to realize that I only have a week left on this project. The thought is slightly overwhelming since there is still so much happening on site! This week was full of activity.

One of my (self-assigned) activities this week was ordering the pottery washing toothbrushes by color

Monday, July 4^th, was a lab day for me, and I worked through a large part of the ceramics that still needed labels. After lunch the Fourth of July celebrations commenced! While our crew has members from Sweden, Canada, Australia, Portugal, and Mexico, we all got into the spirit for the 4^th. Everyone pitched in to make a delicious dinner of burritos and dessert of various chocolate cakes and pies, and two members of the crew went to the local Chinese store and purchased a kiddie pool. It was a really fun experience with a great group of people.

On site this week destruction, both modern and ancient, was a dominant theme. The area I began working in on Tuesday and continued into during the rest of the week holds thousands of tesserae that had been removed from earlier floors and dumped into a pit to make room for a new floor during antiquity. To me, the concept of destroying something as unique and intricate as a mosaic is mind-boggling, yet when I consider the constant remodeling efforts most Americans undertake on a regular basis I don’t bat an eye. It leads me to wonder whether one day someone will look at my house and shake their head at the waste we created when we ripped out our linoleum kitchen floors and replaced them with bamboo. I highly doubt the impact will be so great, or this event will even happen, but seeing the remodeling efforts of the ancients made them seem a little more human to me in that moment.

On the modern front I had my first experience with removing pavement. It was necessary to see the next layer, but as we were about to remove pieces with little deterioration my Portuguese director expressed his discontent with having to destroy one part of the occupation to access another. Even though our photos and drawings of the layer were pristine, after removing it the physical, tangible evidence of that layer would be gone save for the pieces kept for lab. Excavation is an inherently destructive process, but I felt the impact of that concept at its fullest this week. I was eager to see what would be found in the next layer, but it came at the cost of removing what was already preserved above.

Since excavation for this season will be coming to a close next week the work on site has been punctuated with drawing the site and taking elevations more so than usual. Our site does traditional hand drawings rather than using a total station, and since this may be unfamiliar to some I’ll take a moment to explain how the process works. The drawings are done in two dimensions, length and width, that are recorded onto graph paper. Using a set meter line and a measuring tape the perimeter of the unit is plotted to show the shape of the unit. Drawings can include the perimeter of the area as well as features within. 

Elevations are then taken by setting a level and viewing a measuring stick at relevant points in the unit. The value on the measuring stick is subtracted from an absolute value to determine the elevation above sea level. This task usually takes at least two people and gives an accurate view of the unit that can be used for reference as the project progresses. 

The measuring line and the tape

My partner Emily using a "Portuguese Plumb", a nail with twine, to determine the point. The benefit of "making the draws", as our supervisor calls them, is that they can be made at all units across the site at once, though this does sometimes means plumb bobs need to be improvised if they are all in use.

The level looking out onto the unit

Next week will be the final days of excavation for Santa Susana 2016. Though there will be more cleaning than excavating later in the week, anything can happen! I am excited to see what we will find before the season ends and how it will guide preparations for 2017.