Troweling, pickaxing, shovelling and many, many
small find recording – so could one sum up the last two weeks’ field activity.
After the first week of warming up, everybody got into a great rhythm
concerning the work flow on site. However, no one should imagine that students
were kept as slaves only to get rid of the thick and compact “blackish” layer,
which really consumed the most part of everyone’s energy.
The hard labour was completed by a good and cheerful atmosphere. The jokes and laugh tried very hard to suppress the monotonous sound of pickaxing and shovelling, which seemed to be a successful operation. The four teams started to develop their own team spirit. The last week will definitely decide whether the “best” team no. 1; the “outstanding” team no. 2; the “brilliant” team no. 3 or the “marvellous” team no. 4 will be the winners of the excavation.
During the past two weeks the team managed to
document and record, and afterwards to remove the demolition layer of the
building. Thus new contexts related to the disuse of the building and other
features started to contour. Everybody had the chance to take part in the
documentation process including completing context sheets, planning, taking
photos or recording small finds. The two weeks were long enough for everyone to
get familiar with the single context planning method used at the excavation.
Some layers, like the famous “blackish” or the “brownish” layer, contained
dozens of pottery shards, animal bones and a large amount of interesting small
finds (terracotta fragments, coins, turibula, terra sigillata, complete oil
lamps) which resulted in an endless queue at the small find register and around
the total station.
The ceramic building material, simply called CBM, was processed on site by a special “squad”, the CBM team which classified and determined the different tile and brick types and fabric, and built a huge CBM pile sanctuary for everyone’s delight.
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