Another season is coming to an end here in Oman. This year was a short season due to Ramadan falling early. Our plan for the next few years is to switch to December or maybe August so that we can avoid Ramadan. (It moves forward about 10 days each year.)
The last two weeks have been very busy, we had a few field trips, found a few cool artifacts and finished mapping the site. Today we are submitting our reports and packing everything up. Report writing & paperwork is a large part of archaeology--you never see Indiana Jones doing paperwork!
First let's start with the field:
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| We found this possible lamp early on in Brett's Unit KK. |
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Also from Unit KK a decorated piece of wood. It's hard to tell but this is painted with red & black paint on what appears to be a wooden bowl.
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| Another lamp, this one in the shape of a star, was found by Sue in Unit LL. This picture is before we cleaned it (obviously) we are going to keep a soil sample for analysis to see what was burnt in the lamp. |
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| I found a small room with a plastered floor in Unit W. This is me trying to excavate the dirt but leave the plaster--not as easy as it sounds! |
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| This is a picture of the floor & room once it was completely excavated. This appears to be on the second story of the house we have been working on. |
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| Brian using a Total Station to shoot in points so that we can accurately map the site. |
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| Here is a draft of the composite map from all three years, made by Brian. |
Now for the fun:
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| We traveled to several places this season, this one was taken on the way to Wubar/Shisr. It must be early on because Zach & Brett still look awake. ;) |
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| We visited Wadi Darbat, not very green yet but on it's way. |
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| Sue (hidden) in a tree at Tawi Attar sinkhole. |
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| Also at Tawi Attar, I was trying to figure out what sort of critter this was (he had gone to the great forest in the sky), turns out it was a civet. |
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| They are hard to see but here are Sue, Brian, Brett, & Zach in Wubar/Shisr. |
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| Brian playing Lawrence of Arabia in Shisr. |
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| The annual, Camels on the Road, photo. |
And finally I leave you with this little guy... who was in our house... who's friend we had already gotten rid of and was MUCH larger. This dude only has 6 legs but we think it's a banana spider. I wasn't going to stick my hand up there for scale but he was at least 6-8 inches around!
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| ICK! |
That's it for us this season. We will return to Salalah in December, inshallah (hopefully.)
This looks like it was a lot of fun, and you guys found a bunch! I am curious....Is your little room on the map? And are those stairs in the middle?
ReplyDeleteYes, if you go back to this season's first blog there are letters on the map, my room is in W. On the map in the photo's above it's on the left-hand side, it's a 3-sided room in a sea of brown. ;-) Yes there are stairs in the middle, so far 7 steps, but we think we've reached the end. There is also a smaller set of stairs on the middle right, between two short brown walls.
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