All Change!
So we're halfway through week two already, time really does fly when you're having fun. We're at that point in the project, when some old faces are about to leave us and new faces are beginning to join. I always think it is a little sad when you reach this point of a project. You've made some great new friends and shared so many experiences, both work related and social, that you really don't want to say goodbye to them. On the flip side, you're about to welcome new people, which is always an exciting prospect.
Today, on site, we decided to shake things up a bit and give people who had been mostly cleaning, time excavating, and vice versa. Since I spent most of last week excavating the cliff site, I volunteered for finds cleaning duty. It was really nice, having spent time cataloguing with Noortje over the last few days, to go back to cleaning. I was able to identify different fragments as they emerged from the clods of earth stuck to them. Sometimes, we have specific types of object that should not be washed, for example, ceramic griddle fragments. This is because we want to send them for starch grain analysis. However, it can be really difficult to identify the type of ceramic object in your hand when it is caked in mud, and it only becomes apparent what you have after you've dropped it in a bucket of water. It's also frustrating when you're washing something ceramic-like which turns out to be a stone. We now have quite a few very clean stones...on the plus side, I managed to stay relatively clean for a change.
So, the latest new experience was to drink coconut water straight from the coconut. Apparently, drinking coconut water is good for the intestines and recommended to people suffering kidney stones. It is an acquired taste, not at all what I was expecting, like a slightly dry, nutty, water. But definitely refreshing (despite my face pulling in the slide show).
Tomorrow is the last day that our Grenadian students are working with us, so I have asked Rockim if he will write a guest blog post. I've told him he can write whatever he wants, the good, the bad, and the downright crazy. On which note, I leave you with this gem snapped earlier today courtesy of Finn.