16 September 2010

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Good evening!

Blog post title taken from the song of the same name by The Smiths.

Tomorrow morning before sunrise, I'll try to chase the zodiacal light. However, I'm not sure if I'm gonna see much, or anything at all, on account of all the light pollution. You've seen it in my two latest pictures taken in Hamburg. I live an hour south of the city, yet I can still see a glow on the northern sky.
We're not going to dig tomorrow, so the ninth week at the excavation has come to an early end this afternoon. Here's a picture showing one half of the excavation site. 




Due to the heavy rainfalls over the past couple weeks, we've covered part of the site. We ran out of tarp though. Unfortunately, David McAllister, the prime minister of the state of Lower Saxony, which we're in, doesn't seem to care much about archaeology, so we need to pinch and scrape.

You're not gonna see the other half of the site - it's far too messy to look nice in a photograph. The reason for this is, we're cutting deep into the earth to draw cross sections. Fortunately, I'm no longer the only student working here. For a couple weeks it had been only the supervisor and me, but now we got some more hard-working lads helping us. 

The most recent findings include a hip bone, wood charcoal, and lots of medieval pottery. A while ago we found some musket balls. According to a story I've heard a while back, the French army once marched through the area and conquered nearby Lüneburg, so I'd guess they're from back then. Such is archaeology: Sometimes you don't know anything for sure!

I've done some work on my road bike; it's in better shape now - I had a bad fall earlier this summer. Maybe I'm gonna go out for a ride tomorrow...


Have a nice weekend!

- Dom

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

es ist ein sehr schönes foto mit dem langen schatten und dem tiefen licht.

"zodiacal light" ... sind das sternschnuppen? ... ich fand keine angemessene übersetzung ... und so "flüssig" wie du werde ich nie werden :-)

donnie said...

rain and digging holes - they are soul sisters :)) most excavations end up soggy - am off to Uist on Saturday - it will rain

Dom said...

You're right Donnie! Hope you enjoy the archaeology forum on Uist.

Manfred, danke erstmal! Das wird auf Deutsch auch so genannt. Siehe Wikipedia: "Zodiaklicht". Eine Sternschnuppe heißt auf Englisch "shooting star".

Brooke said...

Yeah, there's no way to catch that zodiacal light here... so much light pollution. Glad to hear your help has arrived for the rest of the dig tho! Hopeflly they work pretty well :] The work on your road bike... is that the same one that was having gear shifting issues?

Dom said...

Yeah, same here, didn't see any of it. I got up at four o'clock in the morning! hahah.
They work great, they look like Vikings! Long blonde hair, beard. Tough lads.
Yep, the gears work great, thanks to Paul's advice. The handlebar was in bad shape too though. Now I only need to do something against the scratches and it'll look as if it was new.

Brooke said...

I'm glad his advice helped! He knows what he's talking about when it comes to mechanics lol Those lads of yours I'm not too sure they sound attractive or not? haha 4 am... I can't wake up that early.. but I can certainly stay up that late :D

Dom said...

They're not attractive. They're just supposed to work hard so it's not important what they look like. Girls... :-)