My mentality while excavating more contextual layers has made me nervous about missing something or hitting something important. Maybe because while digging, I’ve found so many objects and whatnot that are important while aimlessly picaxing away. So obviously I should not be picaxing away, and I am dramatizing this story, I promise. Anyway, It’s fascinating to try to find a place where I can work both quickly and cautiously.
In the area I’m digging, the fact that no one has any idea of what’s there is actually crazy. I did originally think it was a tree, and that maybe the area wasn’t part of the bath at all, and it just burned down so they made it a room. Now, I actually have no clue. We found that huge piece (I found that huge piece) of wood. What do you even do when that happens???? I didn’t even know preserving wood was possible. It vaguely looks like a tree stump, but it isn’t. Maybe a floor board or something. I asked Yunus, our supervisor, what his thoughts were, and he told me none. Very helpful!!! So now, I have several theories on what it could be. Besides thinking it’s a floor board or fully part of a tree, I also think it could’ve been a piece of something that burned outside of the area I’m digging in. This idea comes from the fact that there’s no ash or burned pieces of bone and pottery around it. Similarly, maybe it was the roof of an area that burned, then fell in after. The pieces fall apart easily since it’s old and… well… burned. So that’s all I can think of.
For next week, I hope just to keep digging. What is under the dirt? That’s all. As we level to the hallway next to it and take down that wall, the soil’s been changing!!! And I found a huge piece of glass the other day, which was super cool. Similarly, now that I get to see the change of color in dirt, I’m interested in what causes it and how it got there in the first place.
Out of all the aspects of Archaeology, I think I’ve been enjoying finding glass and would like to learn more about it. I don’t know much about glass or ceramics, but finding pieces of glass has been interesting since they’re all very small and shimmery. Maybe I missed information about it or something. I probably like glass more because I wash ceramics basically every day. When I find pieces of glass, shimmery parts of them always flake off, which is so interesting. Do they study glass in a similar way they study ceramics? Or even charcoal or bones? I’m also interested in how they study them (like my wood), and that process seems interesting. It’s also crazy expensive, which seems very wrong and very evil.
MY WILDEST THEORY!!!!! Is that the room I’m excavating in was a garden. Ming dynasty style. Because then that would make the wood a burned tree, and when it fell, they turned it into a room!!!! That would also make sense why there are so many random burned charcoal pieces scattered across the room. They might be plants or whatnot. And then, they buried it and built the wall over it, which would be why the charcoal pieces are in the wall as well. Also, since these are plants, it would make sense if many of them decomposed over time. Big fan of the garden idea. Which is probably wrong. But I can’t help my theory bc I am an ancient China fan. Sorry !!