Aditu Field School- 14-17 Aug 2017

This is going to be a quick post on the work week so I can really add detail for the fun weekend traveling around the Basque country. I'm sitting here smelling the barbecue from Lakuntzako Pertza, an event involving blood sausage, and will need to run down an grab a taste.

Overall, this week has been incredibly fast paced and efficient which is ideal for wrapping up the field school. Kelly and I fought off the rain and were running inside and out trying to get our legs in trench two done. We were able to finish the drawings, deposit sheets, skeleton recording sheets and extract our legs all in a day and a half's work. The goal set by professionals is to be able to do uncover and complete all of the steps in one day, so it was encouraging to be on the right track. Needless to say it was a long and stressful day of work so dinner and dessert was much appreciated. The dessert of my choosing was a traditional Basque cake and it was the most delicious thing I have ever had. It was almond based that had a cheesecake-y
creamy texture and a white chocolate drizzle on top. Really, what could be wrong about it?

Basque cake
Wednesday was the start of the real deal. There was an unexpected find of a skeleton in trench one, and we had completely excavate and record before the long weekend because it would be risky to leave the skeleton open to the environment. In order to take the measurements we use a plumb bob to find a consistent and consistent angle as well as a measuring tape that reaches from the plumb bob to the base line. The base line was a good 7 meters away and made for an extremely difficult tie trying to get accurate angles and measurements. We had to redo measurements four times which took up an unexpected amount of time. Things go stressful and it did not help that it was very hot and sunny. We ended up taking some of our lunch time to finish up measuring and drawing the pictures but for some reason the tourists were not understanding the concepts of ropes and kept walking inside of our area and standing directly behind up to watch us dig and measure. It was the strangest thing.
Action shot of measuring the ground-cut grave and drawing the skeleton


When we finally were able to extract the skeleton, he was very fractured and it made it difficult to move quickly. In order to keep a cranium intact a method called block lifting is used. It involves multiple trowels and sticks place around the perimeters of the skull and then create pressure from underneath to keep a block of soil around it as a bandage like system. Unfortunately the people of the past put good ol' SK 26 on top of another skeleton friend's feet and we could not go deep enough down. We got it done but tensions were very high! The work week ended with a well deserved beer and a great excitement for the three days off.

SK26

Comments

  1. Wow! Interesting to see the skeleton in the grave. That was quite a find! I'd love watching you bring it up and out of the grave and work with it. So clothing, etc, must have completely deteriorated? Thanks for the photos and your story. Lots to talk about later! Take care and be safe.

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    1. Sorry for such a late response! The make up of the soil has a tremendous impact on what is preserved or not. This soil that we were working with is too acidic to preserve any clothing for long periods of times. Occasionally a cloak pin is found, usually on the right side of the skeleton, that was used to hold the wrapping around the deceased. These are very small iron pins and are often over looked or brushed away into the spoil pile.

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