STUDENT DAYNOTES AMHEIDA 2008

Name: Adam Prins Supervisor(s): Roberta Casagrande Date: 2/11/08

X Excavation □ Small Finds X Topography □ Photography □ Ceramics

└►Area: 4.1; Temple Room(s): AR50 □ Data entry

What I have done:

Today I started the day by helping Fabrizio and Silvia with topography, we (me and four workers) worked to the south west of the villa. After finding what appeared to be the tops of walls, we uncovered quite a bit of collapse which Fabrizio informed me cannot be mapped on their plan. However, amongst the collapse, we found a great deal of black jewelry, which appeared to have been bracelets. One of the workers found a painted potsherd with a triangular repeating pattern on it. The sherd appears to have regular, consistent wheel marks on the inside.

One of the workers found a painted plaster vault about 2 centimeters beneath the surface; he uncovered about 5 centimeters of the vault before I told him to stop for preservation's sake. The paint was extremely well preserved and consisted of a thick maroon colored line and a thick mustard colored line below which was bright white plaster. We also found quite a bit of faience and glass.

When I got to the temple after working on the topographic survey, Roberta asked me to articulate the southern face of the east-west wall in DSU 123. While doing this, I found some organic materials (date pits and bone) potsherds, plaster, and the green fibrous material that we have been unable to identify as of yet.

After finishing with this wall, I observed and directed the workers in DSU 124. DSU 124 was created after we determined that DSU 121 and 122 were part of the same feature, we therefore combined the DSUs into one. We have found quite a few (nine to be exact) fragments and complete statues of Osiris in DSU 124.
At the end of the day I helped Roberta and Valentina take the end of day elevations.

What I have learned:

After finding the painted plaster vault during the topographic survey, I learned—although I was already somewhat familiar with the fact—that in order for the paint to be preserved for future excavations, it needed to be backfilled, and thus we filled it in with sand.

Problems I have found:

I did not have any problems today.