Bring in the backhoe, get out of the way!

Today we moved our trenching efforts to a farm known as Reynistadur, the second most successful in the whole area. We used a small backhoe to dig about a dozen trenches, but only about a third of them had anything interesting in them. We hoped to find buried turf walls, which we did in some cases, and we will be drawing them tomorrow.

We also found an artifact. It's not just that this project shouldn't find any, but that no project really should, because the climate does not treat them well, and the people living here didn't have much to lose for us to find. We found a bone or wood comb fragment a meter down in one trench. We took it over to a local museum for them to handle because we don't have conservation facilities for it here at the ag college. This kind of comb saw use over a long span of time, so it could date to almost any period in the past.

Nature gave us good weather for the day, but a rather chilly northwind sweeping down of the Artic Sea again. Being out all day in the wind tires one out, even if only watching a backhoe all day, and occasionally jumping in and out of pits anywhere from half to two meters deep.

Last night we got back to the house quite late as well, so I'm pretty beat.

Photos:

Backhoe at Reynistadur

Various trenches at Reynistadur

Flowers at Reynistadur

Comb Fragment

Good night.