Yesterday, I dug much deeper than last week into "what might have been a well"... turns out, it wasn't a well. According to the boss, it might have been a sewer pit because they were used for dumping waste too (and we did find a lot of bones and pieces of pottery in it), but we don't know for sure what we got there. Anyway, I wanted to give a little insight into the kind of stuff I'm doing all the time so here's a picture of what the situation looks like now.
When you dig deeper, you take away a layer of soil no more than ten centimetres high (roughly four inches). We do this with a regular shovel. Next, you use a trowel to even the area. Photographs and drawings (in a scale of 1:50 for larger areas, and 1:20 for small sections such as this, respectively) are made for documentation. Last but not least, we use a dumpy level to compare elevations. And off you go, digging another ten centimetres deeper.
It's raining too much for us to work so I got another day off. Before I go on writing an essay I gotta hand in before the end of the semester break, here's a picture from last night...
Bardowick, Germany. August 2010.
With the eyes of a child
The wonder of it all
I used to search the stars at night
And I felt so safe and small
("Hearthammer" / Runrig)
Have a great day!
- Dom
4 comments:
Interessant zu erfahren, wie soetwas abläuft ... das Foto ist wieder außerordentlich, insbesondere der Himmel...
!!!
Danke sehr... hohe ISO Werte geben den Bildern, so habe ich gemerkt, bei Langzeitbelichtungen so einen alten Film-Look.
Seems like it gets tedious after a while stripping away layer after layer. But uncovering things that haven't been surfaced for 100's sometimes even 1000's of years is more rewarding than anything I could think of.
It does bring a thought to mind though how mines, rock quarries, landfills....how much history that gets destroyed, lost, or ruined forever.
Oh no, it never gets tedious because you're always hoping for that one, truly special thing you might dig out! :-) You're right though, we're talking about something between 1,000 to 1,150 years of age here.
It's a shame how much gets lost, or stolen. Most of what you see in museums in Europe and North America has been more or less stolen from historic sites, e.g. Egypt or Greece.
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