Oct. 22 - Excavation

Today, I was primarily acting as the photographer, taking opening/closing/detail shots of the trenches. It was a simple task but nonetheless important, to keep a log of the excavation's progress. Trench QG2, which was opened today, is still flat and uniform. We finished excavating QG2 context 1 today. Trench QG1 is now very complicated in terms of the stratigraphy, so it was important to keep records of what exactly was going on and how we excavated. For instance, context 5 consisted of a pile of bricks, slate, and stone, clustered around the southern edge of the trench. We had to remove those eventually to get to context 6, and because archaeology is a destructive process, we will never be able to recreate exactly how that pile was arranged. At the moment, the pile seems like an arbitrary dump, but the information may be relevant and useful later, and keeping photo records enables us to re-examine the data later.

More generally in both trenches: in QG1, we found our third bullet casing, and a relatively significant number of ceramics. There was also a piece of what looked to be glass, tubular in shape, that is different from the standard broken pieces of glass we've found so far. Lastly, we uncovered what appears to be some sort of pipe or ceramic, which is quite large. We ran out of time before we could remove it, however, so it'll be interesting to see what it is next week. QG2 I believe was relatively sparse in terms of the quantity of artifacts, probably because we are still working at the upper layers of soil. A few pennies were found, however.