Day 6: Excitement is in the air

Right from the start today was anything but ordinary. The long list of difficulties started at 6.00am as we sped down the Fayum highway.

Earlier that morning one of the workmen had lashed our tripod and chilly-bin to the roof... our suspicions were slightly aroused when we noticed only half the string had been used. but hey. we trusted him.

This trust was shortlived.

Some 10minutes into our journey we spot several of our chocolate-wafer bars flying out behind our land rover and into the traffic behind us... like some kind of highway lolly-scramble...

We panicked.

Those chocolate bars are like life-elixir in the desert. So we very, very, very rapidly stopped and pulled over to rescue our beloved lunch-items.

Rescuing our tripod and lunch-box on the side of the Fayum highway at 6.00am

Fortunatley the losses were not too great (we wouldnt have to scrifice one of our crew for food today) and thus we carried on to our desert location. Thinking that the excitement for the day was at a close.

Oh how we were wrong.

We arrive to our transect number and the entrance way is blocked by a drainage canal on two sides, and a huge dune of sand through the middle channel. This was not pleasing to Dr. Evil and so he floored it to make it over the dune.

We soon came to a grinding halt.

Literally... Grinding...

After flailing out of the truck and reversing it off the dune we isolated the cause of this noise... 

It transpired that we had done some field surgery to the exhaust, bending and snapping it off by the wheel arch. 

Oops.

Hastily the boys leapt beneath the car and sawed off the ofending items.

awwwww snap!

The broken exhaust

Marcus posing magestically with the broken exhaust

Rach cradling it like her baby... dont ask... i dont know why either...

The rest of the day passed smoothly with me and Tash running the differential GPS, making out and 4 transects and then following Marcus on his field survey (WOAH PRETTY SHELLS AND STUFF). 

The peace and quiet of work was quickly shattered around 1.30 pm by the sound of artillery shells.... close... nothing makes you work fast quite like the sound of artillary... except for the guy who pulled up with a shotgun... So the story here goes that me and Tash were marking out our transects and a big white car rolled up beside us, shotgun poking out the window. The guy calls out various greetings, waved excitedly and drove off... Tash and me didnt breathe until he was over the horizon...

The exciting archaeological stuff for the day was in the form of our first high density transect. Huge numbers of neolithic pot shards, bone fragments, cores and flakes scattered across the transect area. Some of the flakes had significant re-touching and represented manufactured tools. 

Pretty snazzy stuff.

By the end of the day the total station crew were run off their feet and the analysis team stepped in to get the rest of the transect processed by close-time. 

We will all sleep well tonight :P

Sunrise is pretty cool out here :3

Every nail represents an artifact, pottery or bone!!!!

Rach working the total station, shooting in pot sherds

A grinding stone on the exterior of our transect!