2 weeks left
So I haven't updated in a while which is just do to my exceeding laziness when I'm not excavating. Big news in trench land, I finished my trench, so I believe the rest of my time will be spent helping the others finish theirs of the course of the next week. It seems that the final week here will be devoted to closing the site, giving a big tour to some tv crews, and catching up and finishing all of our lab/paper work. So what has been found since the last time you ask? Well my trench turned up nothing unexpected other than several more stacks of pilae as well as a complete tile floor. I suppose my trench is quite significant in that it gives an entire view of the hypocaust, but it has been fairly unexciting for me in the lack of treasure department. Coins a plenty have been turning up in other people's trenches which is neat and a few days ago, a neighboring trench pulled out a full pot from the 19th century. Kind of odd in that it was a meter down, but it proves someone was here before us. Oh well. Yesterday was kind of special for me as well seeing as I found my first diagnostic piece of glass while helping out in another trench. A pretty piece of a green base which I snapped a few shots of on site. I suppose I should explain what a diagnostic is here. That just means you can identify what something was by what survives in the piece you found. For example, a pottery sherd which preserves a rim is diagnostic because we can use that rim to determine what kind of pot it was and exactly how big it was. So there was that as well as a rather large, and complete, iron nail. That in itself is nothing to shout about as we have already found several, but this one was special in terms of its size. The nail was probably 7-8 inches long and still preserved a sharp point. One thing that is always said is that you find the best stuff in the final days of excavation. Let's hope it's true as were are now done to only 5 more days of actual digging. That's all from me, time to go play in Rome for another weekend.