Riley Stockton
Alas, it is our final week here in Cyprus meaning that our days have been a race against the clock to get as much as we can get done at the site and pottery washing at Terra Ombra. As Laila reported in our last trench report, we got that pottery deposit out and once again began chipping away at the dirt to uncover more in EU28 this past Friday. By Saturday morning we found more plaster, indicating a second floor, with once again a plethora of pottery waiting to be dug up by us. We followed the same process that Laila described for the first pottery deposit; we left them in situ and meticulously articulated them so we could take a photogrammetry of the deposit.
Sunday was full of good finds. We started the day by arriving at site where there was an encroaching fog that threatened to cover the plateau, nevertheless, we swiftly swept the dirt off dirt and Dr. Brandon Olson was able to get the pictures for the photogrammetry before the fog came in and ruined our chances. Once we got the pictures, we were able to get all the pottery up where we found a completely intact juglet and a lead loom weight! As we kept going that day, Mason found a collection of iron nails, an iron spit, and a wavy piece of bronze. We then set out to get under the plaster where we came across a burn layer covering a couple feet of plaster. We chased it as much as we could and then evened out the SU when I found a complete oil lamp tucked away into the corner of our north-west wall.
We went back up to site on Monday for a couple of hours of evening dig where we hit bedrock. We were really excited because the end was just in sight.
When we got up Thursday morning to go to the site, we were pumped to hurry up and finish our unit. However, Dr. Brandon Baker, our trench supervisor, let us know that we could not go straight to bedrock as we thought, but after looking at the stratigraphy there was actually a third-floor surface that we had to get to, then pry that plaster off to reveal the sub-floor, and then we would be able to get to bedrock. On top of that, this process needed to be finished that day because it was our last day to dig on-site before we cleaned all the units for photogrammetry of the entire site. So with that daunting task ahead of us, we immediately got to work. We slowly but surely got to the third floor, took a quick second breakfast, and then went to work on showing the subfloor. When we got to that level that amount of pottery was astounding, so many sherds essentially acting as fill or lying on the bedrock. After about an hour and a half, we uncovered the subfloor and were able to begin the last stretch of hitting bedrock. We were a bit timid to start this because we didn’t know if while we were digging we would find “holes to hell”, holes that can be found in bedrock that just never seem to end. Luckily there were only a couple, and our bedrock was pretty smooth until we hit the northern end where there was a sudden drop. Our trench never ceased to amaze us, as we were going down we found 9 bags worth of pottery, a couple of iron nails, and a bead. Both Brandons helped us by removing some tumble on our eastern wall that we originally thought was part of the wall, as well as helping to trim to northern wall and get rid of the massive rocks sticking out from it.
At this point, we were the only people still on site, but EU28 is officially finished! After many rounds of 20 questions and debates on Caracalla, Laila, Mason, and I have completed this unit from top to bottom this season and I am so exhausted and proud of all the work we did.
