22 May 2012

Saludos!

Day two of digging! I apologize for the lack of pictures today, the wireless seems to be quite slow in the evenings. I will try tomorrow in the early afternoon.

The Digging:
I am supervising the excavation in Field W, Square 2. We have the responsibility of dating the cistern! A very exciting and meticulous job. So far we have trimmed and cleaned our north balk and sifted through a sealed locus underneath an architectural installation in the northern balk of square 2.

We will be digging a trench about 2 meters by 1 meter beside the wall of the cistern. We will follow the wall all the way down to the bottom and collect pottery from the base of the wall. Pottery is important because the fashion and style of pottery is different from every time period throughout history. It is the number one way that we are able to evaluate the dating of a site. The pottery we collect at the bottom or base of the wall will give us the date of the cistern. We are hoping that the date will be 10th century BC and will be looking for Late Bronze Age pottery.

The Field:
As for the rest of the field... We have opened 5 other squares in an L shape around the existing squares from last summer. Following the channel from Field G, we have found the continuation of it in square W11, unfortunately this continuation is only one corner of the square and will have to be followed more in continuing years. The other squares are uneventful at the moment. They have the daunting task of digging through 4 meters of packed dirt and boulders to reach the bottom of the cistern. Dr. Gregor is confident we will achieve this in such a short period of time.... I think we need to dig faster... !! At the end of day two, most of the squares have dug about 0.5 meters.


Okay, pictures and more info to come! stay tuned!!   

1 comment:

  1. Wow, Erika. What an important work. Yes, lots of details and careful work. We started to work around the wall near the cistern last year. Now you and your team can attempt to finish it this year. I'll be looking for more news on things are coming along.

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