Work on our site continues, but very slowly because this is a teaching project for the inspectors. I have not been updating this journal as often as the one for last year in Iceland because not as much happens from day to day: we spend all our time slowly excavating one set of four trenches here, and not moving around from farm to farm to see what each one holds as we did last year.

The weather has cooled down to a reasonable level, for which I'm thankful. Today I went on-site and shot a half dozen panoramas: one overview, one at each of the four trenches, and one on the south edge of the whole site. You can read more about what we've been doing on the official project web site if you like.

Pano 1: Site Overview, shot from near the datum point (the flag) (338 KB)

Pano 2: Trench 4, perhaps a storage area that held huge pottery vessels called pithoi (589 KB)


Pano 3: Trench 3, a couple of mudbrick structures (490 KB)


Pano 4: Trench 2, mudbrick wall on top of nice limestone blocks, near a big open area (581 KB)


Pano 5: Trench 1, building containing large millstones (522 KB)


The food has varied in quality and quantity quite a bit since I last mentioned it. Sometimes we get some really good things to eat, but other times it's dull and repetitive. My gut seems to have become friends with the germs around here now: after two or three bouts of unknind warfare, they've called a truce and I'm a lot happier about that. For tonight's weekly gin and tonic kick-back, I've used some of our zip-lock finds baggies to freeze some water: had I used one of the water bottles, someone would have drunk it.

Our phone service goes down occasionally, as it did on the 8th for most of the day and all night, so I was sad to not be able to get e-mail birthday messages. Willeke had the cooking staff make cake for us to celebrate the next night, but this is my first birthday celebration not in the company of friends and family (although not the first abroad), and I was a bit lonely (sniff).

As far as finds go, our databases are working really well. We had our custom-made cardboard boxes delivered for storing them in an exisiting cabinet, and so they're all packed away safely. We have nothing of particular interest yet. The most exciting, perhaps, is a dried clump of clay that has three small seals as well as an impression of twine embedded in it. This would be the result of someone baling up something like cotton and then pressing their seal into the clay to mark it officially. If the sealed clay was missing or broken, a buyer would know that someone had removed some material. Essentially, it would be like opening a letter sealed with sealing wax: you'd know someone broke the seal and read the letter or took something out of the package.

Most evenings we have a lecture by one of the specialists or project staff trench supervisors. In some cases, when they translate their own presentations, it can be very hard to follow, and I'll often skip the second part and read. Overall the project seems to be going well and the inspectors are getting the information they need to know to help them in their work.