Getting down and dirty with Bob

The third and fourth day of the Diggatiers, however glorious on their own, had more or less the same concentration of work load and positioning on the site of the Brynkir project. On the morning of the 22nd of July Mark led us to the site of the Upper House, where we had to continue the clearing of overgrowth on the north-facing exterior wall on the west range of the structure. The exciting bit for me began when Mark asked me to clear a 1 meter section of the wall. My fine trowel with the proud name of Nebuchadnezzar finally came into action and out of my black rucksack. What followed the clearing of a layer of moss, covering the boulders of the wall, was Mark teaching me how to fill in more forms for the description of buildings and standing structures and the first baby steps towards me having to draw a ground plan of the section I was clearing. All this may sound to you like a load of incredibly unsubstantial things to do. To me those are of the most important skills I have so far learned in my path of an archaeology student. Before I even noticed I was starting to clear more and more of the topsoil from my 1 meter section and this little bit of our small planet was what later became my first trench, a.k.a. Bob. For future reference that is the only way I will refer to my trench. Not because I think it's funny, even though I do, but because I like to believe Bob has his own character and, yes, maybe even a soul. Oh how spiritual of me... Later on that day my lovely team-mates Jenna and Will started digging their own trenches not far from Bob. The Upper house stands no chance. Jenna is now part of the little group of two digging up a trench right across Bob, on the other side of the wall. As soon as Stephen joined Bob and me work became even more fun and easy to do. Troweling, troweling, then sieving, then some more troweling and our third day was over and done. To be continued...

Stephen, Bob and I