First off, we had introductions to three or four regular staff, a couple of trrainees, and couple of placement people, and someone doing a two-day "taster" course is archaeology. Then we had a slideshow about the site by way of introduction to the different excavation areas, what's been found, and what this year's operations will cover.

Essentially, we're working in the northwest corner of the Roman fortress wall, part of which forms the boundary of the site. So far the excavation has come down through modern, Victorian, and medieval layers to the huge earth rampart that abutted the stone walls of the Romans. Different parts of the site reveal various stables, drains, ditches, hospital walls, chapel, etc.

Overall it's a huge palimpsest of features whose range of purposes is clear at times, while at others totally mysterious, especially architecturally-wise. There's no doubt, however, that people have reduced, re-used, and recycled the place. They level off the rampart, use the fill for foundation, then build a structure that incorporates earlier parts of the wall. Still others build against a different part of the wall, then punch holes through it for doors and windows.

For the second part of the day, they put me right to work in the finds lab, with material from a rescue excavation at a small church (in danger of collapsing) outside of town somewhere, since we don't have any finds from this site yet, given that it's the first day of work. A few came in at the end of the day, so there will be material to work with soon enough.

Never having working with human remains before today, it's a new experience in the lab so far! They gave me bags of human bones to clean. They're complete skeletons (also called skellies, by the way) that came from a medieval graveyard, and are unusually well-preserved for some reason. Working with just regular human bones isn't much different from handling cow or other animals, because they're pretty much the same shape, just different sizes.

I didn't quite get to the skull, for lack of time, but will tomorrow. Scraping dirt off and out of what used to be a human head and then washing it may seem a little more personal. I'll let you know about that next. Right now I'm off to find some dinner and then back to the B&B to read and test the iBook with the Panoscan further.