So, finally, we're able to post some pictures from the first week of digging.
Trench, Day 1: At this point, the moss layer had been removed, but we still had to clear off the rest of the organic layer.
Trench, Day 2: Under the Organic Layer is the Leached Layer, in which most materials don't survive. The brownish spots are the enriched layer, where we tend to find pottery and charcoal.
Trench, Day 3: By Wednesday we had dealt with most of the leached layer, and were finding lots of pottery at the ends of the L. Note the big patch of grey in the top corner: leached sand goes much deeper there than anywhere else.
Trench, Day 4: On Thursday we decided to open up a new section, in the top left corner. We left a strip of soil between the new trench and the old one so we could get a good stratigraphic profile. As well, an old test pit (again in the top left corner) collapsed, and so the extension visible at the top is actually just an emptied pit.
The New Trench: So far, this trench has contained lots of decayed pottery and some charcoal. Large charcoal segments that are not yet excavated are under the buckets, to protect them from rain.
Trench, Day 5: A week's worth of digging. Not seen here is the second new trench we started, located to the right of the L.
The Even Newer Trench Extension: The original trench is visible in the top left. This trench has given us some substantial pieces of bone, quartz, and pottery. The pale white region in the middle of the photograph is of interest to us: it may point to a fire-pit.
Ceramics: The darker chunks in this picture are the decayed remains of some pottery. It takes some time to get your eyes used to spotting them while digging, and most of them have crumbled into tiny pieces.
This is a 5 mm long piece of charcoal embedded in fired clay: it suggests that we might, if lucky, dig up the remains of a kiln.
All of us digging away.
Total Station: Our mapping machine. It fires a laser at a reflective prism, and measures the distance in three dimensions from a fixed point of origin. Clever, but a very irritating machine.
A lecture on stratigraphy: We uncovered a nice stratigraphic profile not too far from our site, and here we're trying to figure out what it means.
The profile itself. Things to note include the transition from leached to enriched layers and the doubled layer of organic material near the top, which may suggest human disturbance.
Sifting: Once you've dug out enough soil to fill your bucket, you go and sift it to make sure you haven't missed anything. Unfortunately, anything you sift out can't be used for examining spatial distributions.
Setting up the tarp. Finnish weather is very fickle, and it generally rains on and off all day, making a good tarp a necessity.
At the Lordi Rock-taurant in Rovaniemi. Lordi, a Finnish metal sensation, has used their success in last year's Eurovision song contest to launch a number of different Lordi-related products and services, like Lordi Kola and their restaurant. The decor is warm and inviting: you eat out of skulls and the walls are covered in corpses, gargoyles, and dismembered body parts.
Andre Costopoulos, our fearless leader, enjoying a moment of sinister contemplation in his new favourite restaurant.
Trench, Day 1: At this point, the moss layer had been removed, but we still had to clear off the rest of the organic layer.
Trench, Day 2: Under the Organic Layer is the Leached Layer, in which most materials don't survive. The brownish spots are the enriched layer, where we tend to find pottery and charcoal.
Trench, Day 3: By Wednesday we had dealt with most of the leached layer, and were finding lots of pottery at the ends of the L. Note the big patch of grey in the top corner: leached sand goes much deeper there than anywhere else.
Trench, Day 4: On Thursday we decided to open up a new section, in the top left corner. We left a strip of soil between the new trench and the old one so we could get a good stratigraphic profile. As well, an old test pit (again in the top left corner) collapsed, and so the extension visible at the top is actually just an emptied pit.
The New Trench: So far, this trench has contained lots of decayed pottery and some charcoal. Large charcoal segments that are not yet excavated are under the buckets, to protect them from rain.
Trench, Day 5: A week's worth of digging. Not seen here is the second new trench we started, located to the right of the L.
The Even Newer Trench Extension: The original trench is visible in the top left. This trench has given us some substantial pieces of bone, quartz, and pottery. The pale white region in the middle of the photograph is of interest to us: it may point to a fire-pit.
Ceramics: The darker chunks in this picture are the decayed remains of some pottery. It takes some time to get your eyes used to spotting them while digging, and most of them have crumbled into tiny pieces.
This is a 5 mm long piece of charcoal embedded in fired clay: it suggests that we might, if lucky, dig up the remains of a kiln.
All of us digging away.
Total Station: Our mapping machine. It fires a laser at a reflective prism, and measures the distance in three dimensions from a fixed point of origin. Clever, but a very irritating machine.
A lecture on stratigraphy: We uncovered a nice stratigraphic profile not too far from our site, and here we're trying to figure out what it means.
The profile itself. Things to note include the transition from leached to enriched layers and the doubled layer of organic material near the top, which may suggest human disturbance.
Sifting: Once you've dug out enough soil to fill your bucket, you go and sift it to make sure you haven't missed anything. Unfortunately, anything you sift out can't be used for examining spatial distributions.
Setting up the tarp. Finnish weather is very fickle, and it generally rains on and off all day, making a good tarp a necessity.
At the Lordi Rock-taurant in Rovaniemi. Lordi, a Finnish metal sensation, has used their success in last year's Eurovision song contest to launch a number of different Lordi-related products and services, like Lordi Kola and their restaurant. The decor is warm and inviting: you eat out of skulls and the walls are covered in corpses, gargoyles, and dismembered body parts.
Andre Costopoulos, our fearless leader, enjoying a moment of sinister contemplation in his new favourite restaurant.
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