tweezers and torrential rain

I was assigned to the environmental lab today. Usually this involves sifting and floating soil samples but today it wasn't sunny and rain was threatening. This means that I was relegated to sifting through plates full of dirt with a pair of tweezers to look for bone, charcoal, pottery, seeds, glass etc.

This is what we found:


And that is basically what I did all day. There was a thunderstorm for much of the morning but since we moved the lab inside we continued working while the students who were excavating today just sat around.

This is how Catherine felt about it:


I actually kind of enjoy lab work because that is what real archaeology is. Digging up things is all fine and good, but without analysis there there isn't a lot of concrete information about the past people learned. or at least the lab work illuminates much more detail about what is being excavated.
the things that we pulled out of the dirt samples today will be analyzed to determine ancient environments, diets and the like.

Because the rain turned the trenches into swimming pools and and pushed a lot of dirt on top of the areas that we worked in yesterday the context of the top layers is ruined. parts of the team went back this afternoon to bail out the cuts which had filled with water. Because not excavation could be done in wet soil, the majority of students were given jobs cleaning pottery for the afternoon.

Monotony continued until 3:30 at which point we were allowed to go to our air-conditioned bus for the 40 minute nap/ride home.

Catherine and I spent the evening at Parin, Julian and Sam's again, they made delicious soup for everyone and we spend several hours sharing riddles. wholesome.