Dig: Second Week

Yesterday was a fairly quiet day, I spent it in Finds (pottery lab) washing pottery. My favorite part was when I got to clean up a jaw bone, probably from a pig. There is something entirely strange about using a toothbrush to clean up a skull's teeth. It was awesome. I took a photo but of course can't post it. Gahhhh.

The evening was nice as it was a lovely day and pizza was had for dinner.The place we went was empty at first which was weird for such a big place but it got a little busier as we are leaving; turns out the Italians eat a lot later than I am used to! Also getting up at half 5 every morning does not endear me to late eating.
 I'm almost looking forward to going to France so I can use my patchy awful basic French, at least I can say a few words! I'm hopeless at Italian and just mumble thank you (pronounced wrong I'm pretty sure) most of the time. Thankfully Joe has pretty sweet Italian language skills. Jealous.

Today was a good and bad day, there was altogether too much wheelbarrowing going on and the dump pile seemed to get further and further away. That part I very much did not enjoy. It was also sweltering hot today and I haven't adjusted very well to the heat. We did however find a Well or manhole (we aren't sure yet), it even had the remains of a cover! So that was very cool. I also found lots of bone (probably from a pig), a broken metal nail and a piece of charcoal. Exciting stuff. We also finished excavating a cistern we found a few days ago, it once had a waterproof plaster floor, so that was pretty cool.

The other strange that that happened was my Early Rome lecturer Jeremy from Auckland Uni (the one who suggested the dig to me in the first place) turned up for the day. It was very surprising. I ended up excavating the cistern with Jeremy for a while which was cool, he was always my favorite lecturer at uni.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July which has never occurred to me as a day to celebrate but considering it's a big thing in America its interesting to hear everyone talk about it and their plans for after the dig that day. I'm mainly just excited for the football game but it will be interesting to see what everyone does to celebrate! Apparently fireworks are often had, it's a shame that can't really happen here.

Tomorrow is meant to be even hotter than today was, something I can't even comprehend yet. I'm sure I will be very vocal about it next blog post.