Bluegrass in Orkney...

As I suspected, my back was pretty sore today, but I could move still, so I went and worked hard as usual. I was working with the same supervisor today but he seemed to be a little more relaxed about the whole process. My task today was to dig down into what we assume to be a circular wall, that is about 2 yards in diameter. It is probably a later addition to the site, built sometime in the late Neolithic period, and the craftmanship of the wall is much less exact that that of the earlier structures. At some point in time, the small area I was working was filled in with rubble as the people probably deconstructed it to use the stones for a new purpose.
My supervisor told me how I didn't need to be so delicate because the only thing I was likely to find there was rubble, so he took his trowel and really tore into it. I did my best to do the same when he was gone, and I guess I succeeded somewhat because he actually came by later and gave me a compliment. In that area I found several small pieces of broken pottery, lots of burnt animal bone, and rubble. He was right that there was nothing incredibly valuable.
After lunch I was taught how to survey with a GPS thing on a stick. My job was to go around to all of the areas that were actively being excavated, survey exactly where each tag from small finds was located, and then remove the tag. Somehow the surveying machine connects to a sattelite to pinpoint the area within 2cm. Often the surveying on site is done in a less technological way, when two people are needed in two seperate places on site, to compare distances and measure with a laser. The sattelite GPS thing was very interesting.
That was my job for the rest of the day. About two hours before quitting time, a man sat down on one of our rubble heaps, hooked up an acoustic guitar to a mobile amplifier, and started singing and playing blue-grass. That was a very odd combination of music and scenery. They just didn't go together, but he was quite good and no one seemed to mind him. Later I found out that he is a friend of the site director, Nick and that he is from Salem, Oregon like the kids from my school. I also learned that Nick's favorite music is apparently blue-grass. That is not at all what I would have guessed.