Thursday, June 14, 2007

deSoto field school

The past couple days, I have been volunteering at the deSoto excavation, which is an FSU field school here in town. Most of the field school occured in May when we were away, so I was not able to participate as a member of the staff. I have enjoyed my time there though. Today and yesterday I was water screening, which is passing all the excavated soil through screens of certain sizes using water from a hose to wash the dirt through. Artifacts that are larger than the screen holes remain on top of the screen, and become visible as the dirt is washed away. We have been using 1/4 inch and 1/16 inch screens for this process.

This week is the last week of excavation, so it was enjoyable to go see what was going on and visit the people I know there. Even though I was not getting paid, it was nice to get my hands dirty doing some archaeology for a few days.

For more info on the excavation, here is the blog they are updating: http://msbar.blogspot.com/

1 comment:

David said...

We did a similar thing at the excavation in Israel... without water. It was dusty.