What a difference a day can make! Fresh from the get-go this morning the weather counldn´t have been better. Sometimes no clouds appeared in the sky, and later, when they did, they were the white puffy kind. Visibility was unlimited. And the temperature went to at least 18 degrees C, so at least double yesterday. It might have been higher.

Now, you may thing I´m talking about the weather because there´s nothing else going on, but that´s not the case. Weather affects our group morale, or efficiency, and our fieldwork. People can stand around all day when the weather´s nice talking about what´s showing up in the trenches or what´s appearing on the digital maps we´re making that show what´s under the ground. Weather can play a big part in what we do and how we do it.

We extended both of our trenches at Hof today, so one is now 14m long and the other is 18m long. Both have cut into the collapsed wall of the Viking longhouses, and we have found areas where the turves have dissolved into soil. We have a tephra expert coming tomorrow who will give us wisdom on distinguishing various layers so we can do a better job of dating the walls, once we´re certain whether certian tephra layers lie above or below them.

Our people running the various devices have now proved that they can find buried structures. The project is ahead of schedule and everyone seems to be happy with the results we´re achieving so far. The beautiful day helps, but even yesterday, after the cold. Shortly we will be concentrating efforts at Reynistaur, a little ways down the road.

Uploading pictures is still quite the chore and relies on certain machines being available for long enough.

(The panoramas originally linked here have been moved to their own entry.)