I felt so much better today and was back on site. I've been drinking lots but slowly over the course of the day and most of our work today was in the shade. After our
chat with Chicago House (well, Jon’s chat), we decided that we’re going to hold
off on doing more epigraphy for the moment. They were very clear that our
drawings were actually really good (not even just because we had only done this
for a few days). They had some good ideas of things to add to make our drawings
clearer when we ink them later, but nothing needs to be re-done.
However, epigraphy takes forever and what’s more important
for the next few weeks while Jonathan is still here is to record everything
fully. And I meant fully. Obviously we need the photos that are as level as
possible with as perfect raking light as possible (oh so easy to do when you
have no tripod for holding the camera over the block, the sun moves without you
being able to control it easily, and the blocks not being flat on the bottom
side- oh wait, no, it’s extremely difficult). We also need a full description
of every single side of the block, not just the face, including chisel marks
and evidence of reuse. The other sides tell us what kind of block it might have
been: a smooth side face is very characteristic of a door jamb, a smooth bottom
indicative of door lintels, and chisel marks on unfinished sides help determine
if any blocks connect. So we measure and log everything and clean all the crud
off while we’re at it. Personally, I hate the data entry. It’s not that I find
it tedious necessarily, Jonathan is just really detailed in what he wants us to
include, and I’m more interested in getting as many done a day as possible.
He’s totally right that it all needs to get put in this way and I don’t blame
him at all, but he’s more of a tree guy and my mind prefers to see the forest.
So we’re trying to compromise by putting in as much detail as he wants while
letting me pick the block we do next based on how much patience I have left.
For better or worse (and in many cases, it’s worse), God did not grant me much
patience when there is lots of work to do and snippy starts to fill the void
(ok, it’s another synonym for that, but children read this blog), so this
system is best for everyone.
In other news, there are some really interesting things
being found in the 2 areas that are being excavated by the real archaeologists
(the Old Kingdom area that Greg is in charge of and the First Intermediate
Period wall where Lindsey and Nadine are working). If you get a chance, you
should check out our more official blog at telledfu.blogspot.com. I’m not sure
exactly what I’m allowed to publish here, so I’m not going to give up anything
I shouldn’t, but especially over the weekends Nadine tries to write up a
general “here’s what happened this week” post and Lindsey or I do more specific
ones throughout the week.
They also began digging the trenches for benches 3 and 4 today. No pics, though, because our internet is out again (surprise surprise).
I’m only able to log on here through the niceness of Aaron and his personal
internet stick (one of which I will procure for myself while in Luxor because seriously, this is silly and I just need to spend my own money to have reliable internet. Peter, you would shudder to see what they are doing here. Maybe I'll get a photo of that, too...). Hopefully (Insha'allah), we get internet soon because I have some fun posts planned for you for while I'm in Luxor that really need photographic details.
