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 4th,
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 4th. 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.
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