It's Friday, Friday...

Friday started out as a nasty day weather-wise. Luckily, I was in the on-site house doing research for my project for the first half of the day.  The other first-year Willamettes and excavators got pretty muddy, but by lunch time the sun had come out and the waterproofs had come off. That was also when I was called to do some troweling in Structure 10. It felt great to be back in the dirt. In my section I worked with a retiree who has worked at the Ness for the past five years and it was fun to learn about her experiences.

The majority of finds we were making are termed "foreign stone" which includes everything from rounded river pebbles, to large chunks of red sandstone that we sometimes see. These are non-structural, but must have been deliberately brought to the site. As one of the site's professional geologists says, these rocks "didn't just float here." If any such stones have been intentionally manipulated, they are classified as "worked stone" instead.

We also found fairly large chunks of cramp, which is a glassy substance somehow formed by burning seaweed, (see last year's entry about cramp on July 26, 2012). It is fairly easy to identify if it is large enough to be noticed. The first indication that it is not a rock is its shape. It is bumpier and less uniform than the rocks, and it sometimes has sharp, glassy points. Additionally, it is much lighter than most of the stone we find on site.