Catch-up

Hello all. I didn't fall in the bay or anything, I've been very sick, so I haven't had anything good to say, but Thursday and Friday I made it back to site.

I did flotation for part of Thursday and dry sorting for the rest of the time. I've never done dry sorting before, but I liked it. Samples of soil are taken from every context, then the samples go to flotation. There they are washed and all of the floating materials like charcoal or seeds are collected. The silt is washed out of the remaining sample which then consists of anything from gravel to fist-sized rocks, chunks of pottery, flint, non-floating charcoal, bone, and anything else that was in the soil but too large to fit through the sieve. That stuff gets dried, then divided by a series of more sieves. Dry sorting is taking the varying sizes of gravel and dividing it into different materials, such as bone, charcoal, etc. Regular gravel is thrown out and the other materials are sent to specialists.Dry sorting is slow and dusty work, but I like to see the archaeologically relevant things organized and the regular rocks removed. It is satisfying.

Friday I worked in the finds hut with another of the Willamette students. We organized finds according to their small find numbers, entered them in the registry, and laid them out to dry.

Yesterday was the Kirkwall county show. Many of the Willamette students went to the fair, but I explored Kirkwall further. I didn't have the energy to do much more than that.

Today everyone seems to be recovering from yesterday, myself included. This week is now my only chance to collect the samples I will need for my project, and my professor is now sick with a sinus infection. This trip has just not gone as planned... but at least I got my watch back. :) It will all work out. I just get to play Catch-Up.