Third week

This week has been fairly boring, same old routine of shoveling dirt and wheelbarrowing. We have all been too tired to go see anything in the evenings either. The only interesting thing that happened was a frog leaped out of nowhere at one point!

I've been in labs a fair bit this week which has been a welcome relief. Finds is always fun because cleaning pottery and bone is awesome though slow work. I had zooarchaeology on Wednesday which was quite interesting.  Francesca who is the expert on animal bones on our site showed us all the interesting creatures that had been found at Gabii, including lions paws, part of a leopard and a Beaver!  

Interesting stuff. She then tried to show us how to identify different bits of bones, but the fragmentation made it so confusing. 

 By the end I could recognize bird bone but that was about it. The number of times I asked 'is this a rib?' Only to be told it was a humerus or a long bone or a scapula was ridiculous.  

Still it was actually really cool (though I wish we had been allowed to look at the baby bones from the tombs) and something I could see having further interest in.

 As I realize that although dig can be fun, I really don't love it, I am also discovering things I do enjoy such as pottery and osteology. Now what to do with that...

The third lab of the week was simply awful. I almost fell asleep it was so dull. Enviro lab. aka sorting dirt. Its the most mind-numbingly dull thing in the world and I was not a fan. Here's my plate of dirt that I had to sort through with tweezers before grabbing another plate of dirt.

The most exciting thing that happened was I saw this bug.

Just before we headed home yesterday a storm rolled in from the mountains and created a beautiful landscape.  This was my view from the Enviro lab.  

We then had takeaway pizza for dinner sitting on the balcony, it was awesome.

We were thinking of going to Siena for the weekend but can't really be bothered as there is also a trip to Ostia put on by the school next week. 

Also it looked like it would end up fairly expensive so instead I'm going to spend the weekend trying to stuff everything I want to see in Rome into two days. 

Hopefully see the Vatican, Castel Sant'Angelo, the pantheon, villa Borghese and a few more things. If anyone has any burning suggestions let me know!