More tagging

Thursday 25.8.2016

Well, quess what - we need to do all those tags that were not done yesterday and then some. So, our team had to locate and tag 10 amphorae, If any time would be remaining, then we should document as many amphorae with a North arrow and scale. The idea is that all amphorae to be lifted should be well documented before. Especially the scale was a valuable commodity, and there was only one in the whole ship. The other ruler is personal property of arrow certain staff member, and we could not use it. So, the bag carrying it had to be transferred from one team to another, and only one trench (A, B, and now Bow) could document that way at a time. Sometimes people save money in strange places...

There was clearly again too much room for Mr Murphy to do his dirty work. The first pair from our Bow team was about to start their dive and they were asked first to get the arrow and scale from the previous team still in deco. They dived there, found no measuring bag, and decided (after heated hand signal discussion) to proceed to the wreck. Once there, they somehow (nitrogen narcosis again?) decided that they should really do the documentation, even though they did not have the tools for it. But they did take plenty of beautiful pictures. They tagged only one pot.

Our pair did not get even the arrow and scale bag, because we had so much to do. We needed to tag 9 amphorae and move one tag from an incorrect pot to the correct one. The archaeologists had figured that out from our yesterday's report and photos. Right after getting into water Jouni complained that his back felt wet, but maybe it was just lots of sweat in the undergarments.

We succeeded tagging 6 amphorae. One had an old tag already, one was too much buried in silt, and one needed a tag pin (to be pushed in ground next to the pot or inside it), because there was no handle, neck, or toe to use for tagging. We took photos of all amphorae we tagged, except for the one which was tagged with a pin inside the broken amphora. There was just too much silt flying around for a decent photo. You just could not get a photo with readable tag on it, and then the time run out. We also fond one tag just lying around after it had been detached from its amphora. In the evening Stella decided that the old tag for pot P0375 should be replaced with the new tag tomorrow.

Our tags or ties are by no means fancy or everlasting either. When taking photos of them, one also noticed quickly that we should have used a thicker permanent pencil while writing down the tag number. Thicker letters would be much easier to read or take photos of, especially from further away. Mazotos archaeologists will suffer for this feature for years.

Amphorae tags that we brought back to surface. Nr 266 was the old tag that had become loose when its tie had broken off after a few years in the sea. We did tag that amphora with a new (better?) tag. All this tagging work was just to replace tags placed in earlier and which had broken off somehow.  Lots of expensive work due to cheap materials.

The water in Jouni's back was not sweat, but water leaking in from a hole made by too long bolts in the tanks. The bolts were sticking out so much that (possibly?) when wrestling into his rig while suiting up, he must have snagged the back of his dry suit back to one of the bolts sticking out. Hopefully the suit will get fixed soon. I asked for extra protection for just similar bolts in my tanks. Some people need very long bolts, because their harness back plate or buoyancy control device is so thick. But not us. It could have been just as easily my suit that was snagged and cut. Luckily the water is not that cold and there was not very much of it, so that Jouni could finish his dive while diving in very expensive wet suit.

In the evening Andonis taught us basics of Daminion, which is digital asset management software that can be used to help documenting (e.g.) archaeological photos. We each practiced slightly with it with our own photo sets. Later on we need start using it to document all our photos. Andonis also gave us the very basics of camera properties.