The Halfway Point

It's the end of our second week in Romania, and I can't believe we are halfway through our time here! It has been an exciting week of archaeological finds. We uncovered the top rim of a dolium in our trench, and are now working carefully around it, brushing and troweling, until we find what's inside and get it out in one piece. John suspects it is already broken though, since part of the wall collapsed on it. If that's the case, then anything inside the dolia will be well-preserved.

Secondly, I found a 6th century Byzantine coin!! I was very excited since my partner and I have yet to find anything of "real" value in our section, while everyone else is finding metal pieces and quality pottery. This gives me hope that there will be more things the further down we go.

Our trench also uncovered an early stone wall and possibly a room, which we are still working on.

Someone else in the other trench found a flute made out of bone, which was really cool to see. A key, some blades, and two small coins were also found.

We've had a lot of rain this week in Murighiol, which has made it both difficult and easier to dig. The first day it rained, my trench was filled with puddles, so we could not dig in it that day. Instead, we dug in the other trench. The next day, most of our puddles had dried up, but left the dirt moist, making it easier to dig. This was really nice because, since day one, our trench has been very difficult to dig in because of how dense the soil is and the amount of rocks we've had to remove. We've had to use a pick-axe roughly every 10 minutes to loosen the soil. Even Mihail said he's never encountered ground as hard as this while digging. The upside is we're all going to leave Romania with Michelle Obama worthy arm muscles. Check!

Thursday night, we had yet another big thunder and lightning storm. It poured so hard that the dirt roads in the village turned into mud rivers. We didn't even bother driving to the site to see what our trenches looked like; John said there was no way we would be able to dig. Instead, we all got on a one o'clock bus to Constanta, a large city situated on the Black Sea coast about three hours away, where we will be staying for the weekend.

I posted some pictures below of me working on the stone wall, happily brushing away. Mum, these are for you since I know you always complain that I never take pictures of myself. Enjoy!