Starting with the trench T108 at KKN (finally found out what this abbreviation stands for - Kotikangas North) we had several more quartz flakes found in the leeched layer, about 61 in total. The best find of the day at KKN was definitely two ceramic sherds which were also in the leeched layer at the east end of the trench, which is where the midden (garbage pile for all you non-archaeologists) should be located in the dwelling. These pieces are Comb ware, which is a ceramic tradition that spanned from Northern Finland all the way down to Lithuania and appeared from roughly 6000 to 4000 years BP. I'm including a picture of one of the sherds (a rim) that we took in the lab with this post, it's pretty cool if you ask me. It's called comb wear because a comb was scraped along the wet clay as these ceramics were drying which leaves a very distinctive decorative pattern. This could be evidence of this dwelling being a generalized site, meaning one with little economic specialization, but as I said yesterday we can't really figure this out for sure until the excavation is complete. That's really it for KKN today, everything was mapped, bagged, and tagged as per usual.
Things were still a good deal frozen at the Thing today, but we finally got down through that organic layer and started hitting an interesting mixed leeched and charcoal layer. Turns out trench T208 is just loaded with charcoal, with a large concentration in the middle of the trench, you'll get the idea from the picture I'm including. Another interesting find at the Thing was what could possibly be some slag, I'll update you later on whether this is true after the find has been adequately analyzed in the lab. Other happenings from the thing included the drawing of a scaled Elevation Sketch Map and a scaled Soil Map of the trench.
Moving on to a very exciting day over in trench T308 at the Pits. Maybe I lie. Depends on how much you like charcoal. We found a quite interesting charcoal pattern in the east side of the trench which is shaped like a square with a spherical tail. We don't know what this is, the most likely explanation is that this just happened to be the pattern that the burnt logs were sitting in as they decayed. Other than that we've reached the bottom of T308 in most parts of the trench which means that we will most likely be wrapping up this site by the end of the week and moving the extra person power over to KKN where another trench will be opened up.
That's really all for the day, now revel in our photographic prowess. BEHOLD, US...frozen in carbonite!
A picture of the whole Nocuso 2008 field team at the big ball. Two things to point out, first is the shear number of people involved in the project this year, second is that very few people are actually looking at the camera in this picture, that's because Dr. Ezra Zubrow is taking the same piture from a different angle at the same time here, 10 points to those of you who can identify the people who are actually looking at the camera.
Clayton, a Nucuso student from Australia, poses at the end of trench T108 at KKN.
Everyone working away in trench T308 at the Pits, both mapping and excavation are occurring in this one.
The interesting charcoal feature at trench T308.
Trench T208 at the Thing.
One of the Comb ware ceramic sherds from trench T108 at KKN.Hope you enjoy the pretty pictures, until next time!
Cheers,
The Field School
Cheers,
The Field School
4 kommenttia:
Posting this has been an exercise in trial and error seeing as the only Finnish word I know means "student"...hopfully this works this time.
Seems like work is progressing nicely and Lars might even be learning something. I mean it only took him a week to remeber what KKN meant. I look forward to reading more, keep up the good work Lars!
Now on to more pressing matters. I see at least 3 and possibly four people looking at the camera in the group photo above. The most conspicuous is none other than 'Megalith' creator Andre Costopoulos. Most likely I don't know who the other few people are. I predict the names could be Darrius, Sven, Philip, and/or rumpelstiltskin (but these are just guesses).
- Chris Ames
Ahem...it took me three days to figure out KKN (mostly because finnish takes some getting used to). Andre is one, I think one of the others is a guy name Mateo, otherwise your guess is as good as mine at this point (a lot people this year makes remember all the names early on very hard), and I'll give you 10 points anyway, mostly because Sven was a suggestion...it's really too bad we don't have anyone on the dig this year named Sven...or Bjorn for that matter...
Sounds good! I want to hear more about that weird trident-type thing you talked about yesterday, though ... photos?
Also we should get David Groves over here to heckle, and generally comment about how much better it was done 'back in his day'. :)
As for names, I think your team needs an Yngwie ... yeah, that's the stuff.
- Steve
I don't appreciate heckling. also Ieva is working on a photo, it has to be a panorama blended together from several pics because the thing is too big to fit in one.
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