I took this photo by zooming in on the site from the distant survey point. You can see some of the crew on the horizon. The dark stone you see is basalt which is formed from volcanic activity. Most of the walls on the site are built from basalt.
This is the rest of the survey crew, Wilbur Reid and Ralph Carnathan with the rod.
I have been helping our surveyor Paul Mabry, here you can see him with his total station set over the main benchmark at the site. Greetings,
Today was a productive day. We have made good progress in our squares. Tomorrow we should be able to begin excavating new material from the squares. Our survey team was able to find the points and benchmarks from 8 years ago. So we have reestablished our grid. I spent much of the day hiking around the site and surrounding region. At the end of the day we found a distant survey benchmark hidden for 8 years.
We have changed our schedule because yesterday we got to the site too late. So now we are getting up at 3:45AM, breakfast at 4AM, we leave for the 4:30. It takes us about 45 minutes to an hour to drive to the site. We need to be at the site before the sunrise. We do this so we can get good photographs of our squares without harsh shadows. We take progress photos every morning to record the daily work in each square. Also the early start allows us to work in the cool of the day.
Since yesterday was the longest day of the year we should be able to adjust our wake up time to a bit later as the summer progresses. Tomorrow we will follow the same schedule.
We left the site a little after noon and arrived at the resthouse about 1:30. After cleaning up we had a good lunch, then a time to rest until 4pm, when we have pottery reading and work time. "Reading" pottery is what we call the process of identifying the time period from which a potsherd was made. Dr. Jim Pace from Elon University in North Carolina gave and excellent overview of the process we use to process and record pottery. To learn more about this see his excellent article at http://www.vkrp.org/studies/archaeological/pottery/
Our project is endorsed by the American School of Oriental Research (ASOR) and tomorrow we will be visited by their Committee on Archaeological Research and Policy (CAP). Each year we must report to our work to ASOR. It is much like the process by which colleges and universities receive accreditation.
Well it is time for bed, I have to get up at 3:45AM !!!!
Remember as always you can see all of the postings to this blog at
http://krp2009.blogspot.com/
John Wineland
Karak, Jordan
