Lab Day!

This past week I was able to work in the lab during the week once and on Saturday with everyone! Working in the lab is great because we all get to see what the other members of the class have collected. On Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday) I came in briefly to help with washing, this included going bag by bag and carefully washing/cleaning any non bone/metal material, I really enjoyed this because I got to get a close look at many things. Some of the most interesting artifacts we have in my opinion are the pieces of earthenware with identifiable/semi-identifiable marks; Promise was working on looking through Dr. Miller's books and trying to find some matches. During this day we struggled with finding a good place for all our our washed artifacts to dry so Prof. Hartley put together a drying rack that was able to accommodate more artifacts.

Saturday was more of the same, we have so many artifacts to get through! This day I worked with tagging and bagging gurus Mark and Elizabeth who explained to me (multiple times..sorry!) how to properly fill out an artifact card and re bag what we had. Some of the most interesting things I saw this day were the many nails we have recovered from the various units! We worked with a few different books to try and identify the nails by their characteristics..e.g. flat head...and by using the information we had we could try to identify how long ago certain types of nails were produced and used! I never knew you could find out so much information from just a simple nail! I'm looking forward to getting back on site this next weekend, I miss digging in the dirt!