Today is Tuesday.  The dig site is still way too wet to dig.  It has been raining today and it is supposed to continue to rain for the rest of the week.  Today we did research on our material culture that we have been assigned.  I have the little cup/bowl thing that I found.  It popped right out of the ground at me.  It was really funny.  Today was all about work.  Mr. Thames said we would be able to watch a movie the rest of the week as long as we worked hard today.  So I do not expect to be writing any more blogs for the rest of this week.  He said we are going to watch Indiana Jones or National Treasure.  I haven't seen the new Indiana Jones or the second National Treasure, so I'm excited to see either of them.

We cleaned a lot of stuff today.  The little pot that I found, we cleaned really well.  Bravo team's bronze statue turned a little pink.  They put on some solution to get off all the gross stuff.  We had to clean a lot.  We cleaned my little pot, a clay plate with an intricate design, a glass gauntlet, and other miscellaneous items.  It was not the most exciting stuff, but none the less it was alright.  It has been raining a lot recently so i doubt that we will be able to go outside tomorrow.  It is supposed to get a lot colder at the end of the week as well.  That would be very nice.

WOW! We went down far today. Chris found something like a glass gauntlet in the northeast corner of our square. We really exposed most of the northern wall now. It is pretty exciting. I was moving some dirt with my turia and a little copper bowl literally just popped out of the ground. It was really weird. I didn't even see it, it was still under the dirt. It popped in the air out of the ground. We didn't get a chance to articulate it. We got a lot deeper. It's pretty cool. I have a feeling that there is still a lot of stuff we still need to uncover. It's pretty sweet.

Today is Tuesday. We did dug down today. It was a decent day, but not great. We really articulated the pillar in our baulk today. I had to leave early today, but I wasn't allowed to. i got kind of tired out for our game. Tomorrow is the long day. We always get a lot done on long days. Nothing was found today. Jared and Travis sing a lot. It really is kind of annoying. I don't like Travis as square leader, but I don' really want to be square leader either. There's too much responsibility. Tomorrow should be good though.

Today we cleaned stuff. It was honestly kind of boring. We cleaned everything with a toothbrush and water. I had to go get water several times. We cleaned our stuff; there wasn't a lot of things so we cleaned some other stuff of other peoples squares as well. There's not too much to say about cleaning days. Yesterday was my birthday. I am now eighteen years old. It is pretty exciting. That is realy all I have to say about today.

It's Friday!  It is also Halloween.  My birthday is this weekend and I am turning eighteen.  Today was honestly kind of a lazy day.  No one really felt like doing much, we were all tired.  We did dig a little bit and got our baulks nice and neat and gout our hole nice and level.  We keep finding lots of more bricks, but nothing out of the ordinary other than that pillar.  Alpha team found the other part of their statue today.  Team Charlie hasn't found much, but they are still trying to get level.  Some of the dirt in their square has still gone untouched.  It's okay though, they will find something sooner or later.  I was just tired today, so hopefully next time will be a good day and we will get down really far.

Today was a Wednesday.  An art class came out and watched us while we dug and viewed some of the artifacts.  We got a lot of dirty work done.  We dug down really deep.  Some bricks of our outside wall are fully out of the dirt now.  So are some on our inside wall.  We keep getting closer and closer to excavating our pillar, but we are not there yet.  Also on the outside wall we found out that some of the bricks have slid down and fell off the edge.  That answers our previous question about the gap in the outside wall.  We are getting pretty near to the bottom of our square.  I think Alpha team will beat us to the bottom though.  They are really far. 

Today is Tuesday.  Travis is our new square leader.  This can only mean bad news for our square and the people of Tel Ya'ar.  We really articulated around that pillar in the middle of our square.  We dug a bit deeper.  Our square was a little un-level so we spent a lot of time trying to get it level.  We went deeper, we continue to learn more and more about our square and the history of what happened back in the day.  It is definitely exciting.  We are actually now beginning to dig a little on the other side of our outside wall.  Team Alpha found part of a statue and are continuing to search for the other part.

Today I went to the classroom expecting to do some cleaning or some sort of dirty work like that, but it ended up that we were going to do something else.  There were a lot of little kids in the classroom and we ended up taking them outside to Tel Ya'ar and show them a few things.  We took them to the dump site where Mr. Thames had buried some little toys and such in our extra dirt.  The little kids partnered with a big kid and dug in the dirt.  It was a grand experience.  I hope we can do something else like this in the near future.

Finally, it's friday.  I'm so sick of this week.  I am honestly kind of tired today.  Chris isn't helping us today.  He went home earlier in the day.  But that brick in the center that we found ended up not being a brick.  It is part of a pillar.  Also we are now level with the limestone bricks on the outside.  There are only bricks on the outside and not in the middle.  So the bricks may have slid down or maybe it was a doorway.  It's nice to be level with them now.  Team Alpha found a huge knife in their square.  It was pretty exciting.  Team Charlie is still doing nothing but leveling out their square.

Today was Wednesday, and we didn't have a fruit break today.  But Supervisor Thames brought us some snacks that we could munch on instead.  We dug a lot today.  We still see the few limestone bricks in the corner.  There are also some limestone bricks sticking out on the outside, but we saw those even before we started digging.  We are almost level with those as well.  In the center we found what appears to be a grey brick again.  One similar to one we found earlier.  Nothing else happened in any of the other squares.  We played a joke on team Alpha.  We accidently broke a bucket to where there was a hole in the bottom.  We stuck it by their square and filled it up with dirt.  They then picked it up and all the dirt shot through the bottom.  It was funny.  

Today we excavated our marble plate.  It was sitting on top of the dirt.  We also found some baseballs in our square.  Nothing else really happened.  Team Charlie is still trying to level out their new square.  They still haven't found anything yet, but they have barely scratched the surface.  Team Alpha still has the wall down the middle of their square.  They keep getting deeper and deeper.  It rained recently and helped wash some of their dirt away.  When it rains it fills our square up.  That's because half of our square is sand and our baulk washes away easily.  We have to fix it up almost every day, but it looks nice.  The other side looks gross.  

Today is monday, and instead of cleaning things we learned how to do our new top sheet.  We are taking elevations differently now which i don't think is a good thing because it means way too much paper work.  I like the old way better.  It's really impossible to cram everything about archaeology into a 30 minute class.  We do too much, but not as much as normal archaeologist.  To be a normal archaeologist is a full time job.  It's a full time job for the grunts as well.  We only have 30 minutes, and we are trying to cram everything archaeologists do into those 30 minutes.  It is an unrealistic expectation and I do not like it.

Today was an interesting day.  Usually on Fridays we go out and dig.  Today, though, we stayed in the classroom.  I didn't know we were supposed to stay in the class and so I got ready to out to the Tel and dig.  I finally realized my error when I did not see any others in the same process as I.  I headed back to the class and saw everyone there.  Mr. Thames showed us a different way to do our top sheet on our elevations.  It shows us more of a picture and what our square looks like from each direction.  It is a little tough.  I'm not too sure how much I like it just yet.  In another week I will not longer be square leader so I guess I won't have to worry about it too much anymore.  

Today we found a marble plate halfway sticking out of our baulk.  I think we will eventually excavate it rather than leave it in, but we are not there yet.  The plate is blue in color and has a couple of scratches on it, and it looks similar to the marble cup we found a few days earlier.  We believe we might be digging in a kitchen.

The northern part of our west baulk is messed up.  The dirt there is very rocky, so it is hard to keep it looking nice and neat.  It's kind of frustrating, but there's nothing you can do about it.  The eastern baulk is looking nice and pretty because it is a totally different kind of dirt.  We didn't find anything today, but still were able to dig pretty well.

We moved some dirt today.  It seems like we move lots of dirt, but don't go down very far. Our baulk in the northeast corner was washed away, but we managed to build it back just fine.  It's looking pretty good.

We got down really far today.  Our hole is finally actually level, probably because I'm the new supervisor.  We have baulks on three sides now.  Today we discovered an old tiny cup.  It's about the size of an ancient shot glass.  I got sunburned.  We all worked well together today and everyone was very cooperative.  

We found a brick in the loose dirt today.  It wasn't a limestone brick though.  The limestone appears to be a wall in the northwest corner.  This other brick was made of clay and was more in the center of our square. I don't think that it is part of a wall, but i do not know what else it could be a part of

We found another limestone brick under the first one.  No doubt we are in a room.  It is pretty exciting.  I am guessing that we shall uncover more as we go deeper down.  

Not too much happened today, we did not find anything.  The limestone brick we found is still exposed, but it's not out of the ground yet.  There is probably a wall there, so we don't want to excavate it just yet.

We uncovered a brick today, but other than that, not too much happened.  We found it in the loose dirt so we weren't able to articulate it.  We went down pretty far though.  It was a good day.

Our hole is naturally very rough and uneven.  There are two different kinds of dirt in our single hole.  We have been digging in the same spot the whole time, but are now just starting to dig on the other half.  Our entire square is very uneven, but will eventually become level with time.

1st Post

Um, I'm not totally sure how to work this thing, but this is my first entry I guess. Archaeology is my favorite class, and Mr. Thames is my favorite teacher. We have already begun digging and have not found too much yet, but we do believe we will find a wall eventually.  Our hill is called Tel Ya'ar.  It is a studly hill with lots of hidden secrets.