3 Days More---Partial Project Progress

Yesterday I worked in the finds hut laying out small finds that have been sweating away in their bags for several days. It doesn't matter as much with the stone items, but the pottery gets pretty mushy when it is wet, and mushier when it is in a bag. On this site, excavators are supposed to puncture many holes in the small finds bags before actually leaving the find in there. Some poke two holes in the top of the bag and think it is adequate. They are wrong. Nonetheless, the woman I was working with spent the entire day working on these finds, and just when it was time to leave, we finished the last few bags, so that EVERYTHING found before yesterday was taken care of, or at least on to drying in preparation for the next steps. It felt good.

Today my sick professor and I discussed my planed project, and decided to make a few changes. I'm actually very pleased with the change of course, as the new version sounds more interesting to me anyway. Instead of trying to locate the source of pigment, which would be nearly impossible to do in the remaining two days, I am going to take stones from the spoil heap and use them to experiment with pigment both made from them, and painted on to them. I will be making my own pigment and testing different ways to apply it, such as simply scratching it directly into the surface of rocks, or using various binding agents to paint it onto the stone surfaces. Finally, I will be using the XRF to determine its effectiveness in analyzing pigment samples that are still attached to the stone on which they were originally painted.

After discussing the changes, we went to a beach to the south of Stromness where we searched for possible samples of Galena for me to use when we get back to the States. We knew this area is rich with it because not only do geological maps show likely areas for it, but they also used to mine for it there. We located old drill holes, but we didn't find any definitive galena. This isn't especially surprising because we didn't have our geological map with us, and we didn't have much time. The plan now is to return to that beach tomorrow during low tide, and break up some rocks.

We did have some time to go through the spoil heap and we found several useful stones with which I can experiment later.

The second half of my day was spent learning to use the XRF, and then using it to test various surfaces of a round, worked stone. The stone is from structure 12 and about the size of a small toaster. It is the shape of a slightly squished egg, with a slightly scratched, concave surface on the top. The concave, worked surface has a slightly orange stain on it and we were attempting to determine if it could have been used in the production or preparation of pigment. Unfortunately, we didn't discover anything exciting--The XRF revealed that the areas with the orange stain have a higher iron content than the rest of the rock, which is basically pure silica (quartz). This wasn't surprising, nor was it particularly enlightening, BUT I learned to use the XRF and that was my main goal for the afternoon, so it was a success as far as I'm concerned.

Also, I can laugh today without coughing and that made me extremely happy. When you are sick for so long, you learn to appreciate the little things in life.