The Wall and the Wait

Today was overcast as usual, and sprinkled occasionally, but not enough to even need a rain-coat. Most of the workers always wear their rain pants, or some form of water-proof trousers because we're up and down, in and out of the dirt/mud all the time. That's fine, as long as you can strip off the muddy layer when you're done for the day.
First thing in the morning, I was instructed to clean a layer near structure 14. (Cleaning is taking the trowel and scraping down a very thin layer of soil, to re-expose the different colors and layers in the ground. It's a tedious process and probably my least favorite, because you're supposed to get all the miniscule clods of dirt off of the surface so that the soil in the ground can be viewed without the crumbs.) The cleaning didn't take very long, and when it was done, my supervisor examined and analyzed the results, then had me take a cut out of some of the newly cleaned space. He was expecting us to find a "robber cut" which is a section of wall where the stones have been removed to construct later structures. Usually the robber cuts are full of random rubble. I found random rubble for about 8cm down, then I found a section of wall that had not been distroyed by neolithic thieves! It was pretty neat. My little section was about 1.2m square, with nice flat stones at the bottom (which are the top of what is left of a wall.) One of these stones is about a 40cm wide by 50 or 60cm long, and only one side of it is exposed.
By lunch time I had cleaned up my section, and made a nice vertical cut in the soil, up from the wall level. This cut had other bits of rock or rubble protruding from it, but if those stones are in between the two sections, you leave them poking out and just square up the soil all around them. So basicly there is a miniature climbing wall on the edge of my section.
After lunch, I was waiting for one of the supervisors to help me, and just before he got to me, they discovered a cache of flint and at least one tool among the cache. Anyway, I couldn't get help until almost the second tea time and even then I didn't get much. I decided while I waited, that today ws probably my least favorite day, just because I wasn't doing anything. That's ok. The day was still good.
About 30 minutes before it was time to leave, I got instructions on how to do a section drawing, which is drawing the climbing wall part of my section, from a horizontal view, looking straight at the face of the wall. The shapes of stones isn't so iportant but the slant and the width is. The section drawing is done by first stringing some twine above the top of the section to be drawn, then making sure that the twine is level. Then a tape measurer is strung up above that. My job was to measure from the taught line to the tops, edges, and bottoms of every rock/surface, so that I could accurately portray them on graph paper at a scale of 1:20. (This would be so much easier if I could just put a picture in here. A picture is worth more than a thousand words in this case. If you go to ingleborougharchaeologygroup.org.uk/masongill.htm and scroll down about 2/3 of the page, there is a simplified version of what I am talking about. It is black and white and under "INTERPRETATION".) I got the basic idea of it before we had to leave, but I'm looking forward to working on it more on Monday.
Well, my work clothes should be clean and dry by now, so I'm going to take care of those, then go to bed and sleep in tomorrow morning. :)