Big pot!

Hello all! I just finished with the second day of our excavations. Most of us, including me, were working in the same place we were yesterday, but moving backward on a level to reveal more stuff. Yesterday the tip of some pottery was poking out from my area, but it was sturdy and attached to something still in the ground. Today I got to work on it, as I finished leveling in front of it. I went down several more inches and it is a very large clay vessel of indefinate size. At it's tallest point so far, it is about 2 inches from the ground! If it were an entire piece, (which is very unlikely, especially since it is in the midden,) its diameter would be about 1.5feet. It appears to be standing nearly up-right, at about an 80-85 degree angle. The inside of the vessel is painted black with slip, which was a mixture of clay and water that turns different colors when fired. The outside is the orange color, that i think is natural of this clay, or at least after this clay has been fired.
All that is neat, but what I found to be the coolest thing about it is that it is preserved so well in most places, that you can feel the finger indentations from where the people made it. They are shallow, presumably because the artist didn't want them to be visible, but I'm very glad that they are.
The site supervisors and important people on site are all excited about it. Throughout the day as I cleared bits of it, supervisors came by and made sure I was doing everything alright. They were all pleased with how careful I as with it, although I don't know why they would expect anyone to NOT be careful with a 5,000 year old pot. Anyway, it was great because I love that careful, little work.
Unfortunately when we make the next pass at that strech of land, we are going to excavate down around the pot while keeping it encased in a square of soil. This way it can be "lifted" from the site and extracted in a more careful environment. That means I probably won't get to work on it again, but that's OK. I'm glad I got to work on it so much today.
Another really neat find today was made by another girl from our group, also working in the midden. She found a large piece of pottery laying horizontally on the ground. I didn't get as close a look at it as I did with mine, but it seemed to be about 1 foot square. While the size is neat in itself, the piece was even more special--it had sculped decorations made in clay. From what I saw, there was a pattern that looked like a piece of twine that is twisted together to make it bind. There were several other raised decorations, but I didn't get much time to examine them.
I'm very sore. This morning as we were walking out to the site, a friend of mine mentioned that she was sore, and when I said I was too, she was relieved that she wasn't the only one. She had been thinking that maybe she was just a wimp, which is crazy since she is a college swimmer. I was also relieved, because I didn't seem like such a wimp because she was sore too.My knees, elbows, and palms are bruised and excavating was painful today, but it was still really neat.
I took pictures today,, both of the pot I was working on, and the setting. Again, I'm not going to upload them yet. By the time we get back from the dig, we are all exhausted. We have time to all take showers, all eat dinner, and then about an hour or two left if we want to get a decent amount of sleep. After work today I walked to the small co-op here and picked up more food for lunches and dinners. We are all in charge of our own food.

Goodnight. :)