Our day started overcast, turned sunny and bright, then faded to a cool mist, threatening rain.

Overall a good day, but we do need more rain (at night!) to soak into the ground so that we can see colors easier. The dryness and wind combine to dessicate the earth as soon as we reveal it, hiding colors, and making it much harder to study the site. Plus the wind blows dirt into our faces, ears, hair, and every other inconvenient place.

Troweling and shovel-scraping continue on our main trench in an effort to understand the features there, such as lines of stones and collapsed turf walls. The drawing below shows the director's thoughts on the structure: a multi-aisle sheep barn (or part of house). It's relatively late in date, probably.

We also opened up a new 7-meter by 7-meter square that our devices tell us overlies some sort of "pit house" or other structure that was dug down into the earth, for purposes currently unknown. I'm not quite clear on how we're going to have enough time to investigate the new area adequately in addition to our current trench.

Tomorrow starts a two-day, work-free weekend for us (normally we get only one day off). All the students are taking two cars and going off to see various Icelandic sights and sites around the country, which I visited on my last trip here. Don't know what I'll be doing yet, possibly borrowing one of the other cars to find some nice places nearby to shoot panoramas.

Being out working in the weather really tired me out today. Time for an early bedtime, maybe, if I don't fall prey to the weekly poker game when returning to the base house from the lab where this is written.




Most of our main trench.




Plan and section sketches of what we're probably finding in the trench.




We also take soil cores to show us what lies below. This one shows various layers of turf, trash, and other deposits.