Catch-Up Day at Mota Piece

While the students were in class today, Sue and I went out to Mota Piece for the day with John (the experienced local amateur archaeologist who helps us). I spent the day scraping down all the trench profiles and brushing loose dirt from the trenches to make them photo-ready, helping Sue take and record photos, and helping John do levels (measuring depth below fixed data point).

Then the students came out to the site for a couple of hours after their class, and I was working with Sue in TR 7B troweling down to expose a possible context 5. I found an iron nail, and was working in an area with some bone fragments that Dr. Scott had begun to uncover.

Riding to the site in John's land rover. A very bumpy ride through fields, and my seat in the back
didn't have a seat belt, so I spent most of the ride slouched down in my seat with my hands
braced against the roof, since my head brushed the ceiling if I sat up straight!  

Working name: the "stone thingy" (John's phrase) in TR8. Probably a cobbled
surface for cattle to walk on so they didn't sink in the mud, according to John.

Section of TR8 abandoned due to the water table

Stone thingy

TR8

Instrument that John uses to take levels measurements 

John doing a grid drawing in TR8

TR6 in foreground, TR7 in background

Sue using the water sprayer to wet the profiles I cleaned, so that
distinctions between the soil layers show up more clearly.

TR6

TR7B

TR7B. The "beam slots" I mentioned in an earlier post are now maybe post
holes, since they extend into the trench and are patches instead of long extensions.

Pottery pieces in TR7B

The line visible in the profile was etched by Sue, to help us see the context
divisions better.