A glossary of Vigla jargon
Laila Maidenberg
Like any field of study, here at the Pyla-Vigla archeological project, there’s lots of jargon to learn. Here’s a collection of some of the most common, and my favorites.
SU – an abbreviation for stratigraphic unit, which refers to a section of the area you’re excavating that has a consistent soil color, texture, and composition. This basically makes up a “layer” of the unit, and all of the things you find get bagged and labeled together
EU – stands for excavation unit, and refers to the subdivided square (or sometimes rectangle) of dirt that you’re working in. Each one has a “trench supervisor” who oversees it, and each EU works as a team. It’s a way that we can label finds, and remember which square of dirt different objects came from.
Trench – a slang term we use for EU
Trench supervisor – the person who’s in charge of running, taking notes, and filling out paperwork for each EU
Baulk – the wall of dirt that forms the edge of a trench
Dumpy Level – A tool comprising a very large ruler (stadia rod), and mounted sight, that helps you find out the elevation of a given spot. It’s a great tool, and very reliable.
GPS Stick – finicky stick connected to the Global Positioning System that will record a GPS location for you, if it feels like it.
“Taking a point”- recording the location and elevation of something, using both the GPS and the dumpy level. Aka taking elevation.
Beirut Airport – Where we aren’t, despite what the GPS often says.
Turreya – a flat, square tool used for scooping dirt into buckets.
Munsell Soil Book – a both very precise, and entirely qualitative way of communicating to other archeologists what color your dirt is. It’s a reference book with color swatches, and gives you both a reference number and color name.
Wall fall – a pile of rocks made up from a collapsed wall. These rocks tend to be floating, and arranged mostly randomly, but can mislead you into thinking there’s a real wall there. Aka a tumble.
Floating – rocks that sit on dirt, rather than other rocks, and aren’t part of an architectural feature.
Plow Zone – at one point, the land where our site sits was farmed, and so just under the topsoil is a layer with distinctive parallel lines. Plow blades tend to churn up the soil, so sometimes you’ll find things that you would expect much further down in this level.
Topsoil – this is the layer of loose dirt that’s the very top layer
Mudbrick – a material made out of compacted dirt that we find a lot of.
In situ – a Latin phrase (situ: abl, n, s), meaning “in position”, refers to when we find objects still partially stuck in the soil, as they would have been.
Stratigraphy – the different layers of soil
Deposits – large collections of something, found in a concentrated area.
Coin rock – a rock that really, really looks like a coin, and leaves you feeling a bit disappointed
Special find – a really cool object of some sort. Generally, anything man made other than pottery shards. These get bagged and tagged with special labels, and have their locations written down and marked with a GPS point if they’re found in the trench. If you find one of these, you also get to parade it around to everyone and show off.
Second breakfast – we start pretty early here, so our break occurs around 8:30, and just like hobbits, we usually eat a second breakfast at around that time. This is when you might eat what you picked up at Zorba’s that morning.
Zorba’s – a fantastic 24 hour bakery we stop at every morning