Amphorae measurement and photography

Sunday 28.8.2016

Days begin now with Stella's morning briefing, once all divers are on-board. Now we are supposed to collect more sherds (i.e., broken pieces of pottery). To help us decide what kind of sherds we can put in our nets and which ones should be left there, tagged, and photographed before bringing them up, she had a very illustrative examples on sherds that are small enough to be put in your bag right away. Loose small sherds are not so important, because they have been moving around the wreck for over 2300 years, and their original location is impossible to determine. For example, a 1-2 years ago they noticed a turtle moving finds from one place to another. Before that they had spent years to find out the culprit, who was "messing with the wreck site".

Stella demonstrates what types of finds can be brought up right away in your net. Of course you need to report on what area in your trench the finds were from.

Our dive was again with Andonis. He first tagged two wooden parts that came visible in yesterday's excavation. The we concentrated enlarging the bow trench carefully, and to see whether we would encounter any significant sherds layer. We did not, and there was lots of loose sediment that killed the visibility. I was operating the airlift all the time, and Andonis just guided me to keep it in given position, when he brushed sediment into it. Most of the time I was in sediment cloud, and barely saw the trench under me. Every now and then there was a tug from Andonis to move the airlift this way or that way. Jouni spend the whole time upside down above us ready to receive any sherds we might give to him. They were none. At the end of the dive, we tried to remove most of floating sediment, and Andonis placed a North-marker and a scale next to the new tags for those newly found wooden parts. Some other team later on today would photograph them, and hopefully recover the marker and the scale. That team's plans were changed, and tags need to be photographed tomorrow.

Other teams again raised at least one amphora. There was also lots of sherds brought up, and they had to also cleaned, cataloged and photographed. There were also many finds found in the airlift sieve, including possible olive pits. Assisting archaeology students, maritime ecologists, and the conservationist were kept busy. All amphorae must be inspected and cleaned also from inside. That is done by emptying it with your hands, and then using a water hose to rinse of all sediment. Everything is covered with mud, and so it is nice to be able to take a swim afterwards. Contents are poured into a sieve, so that no finds are lost. In addition to the archaeological finds there can be ecological finds, so you need two types of researchers working together. There is amazing amount of work done based on the finds we bring up. And be do not bring up that much!

We got back very early, already at 14:30. Evening program will begin at 16:00. So, I have time to do some laundry and write most of this blog!

In the evening we had an amphora lesson, where we learned all about measuring and photographing amphorae for archiving purposes. We had two groups, one led by Stella and the other by Agatha. And each group got their own Mazotos amphora to practice with! The amphorae were in desalination, and we had to moisten them every now and then. Then Andonis gave us hands-on practice on how to document amphorae with photographs.

Amphora parts are named after human features, just to make it easier to remember: shoulder, neck, body, toe or foot, etc. The idea is to describe it so well with descriptive text and measurements, that you would recognize it even without a picture. There are lots of measurements, and it is not always so obvious where neck ends and shoulder begins. Try that with humans, and it is not so precise then either!

Amphora height measurement is team work. Five to make the measurement and one to document the measuring. That seems about right for all work in the project.

Before dinner we still had short 30 minute planning session with Stella, to set the goals for tomorrow's dives. Our trench has again very interesting plans, though I will not be diving. It is my off-gas day to let the body completely recover from one week on continuous diving to 43-45m. I will not go to the work site at the M/S Queen Zenobia, but instead help Irene at the office. Irene keeps overall track that the project data base stays in order. All trench team leaders report to her at the end of each day, so that all finds recording, dive logs, and all other documentation is kept up to date. She works very late, but hopefully she will then sleep a little bit later also. I probably will still wake up at my usual time at 5:30.