Week 3 Achill Island: 6-11 June 2016

Monday we had an easy day because we were learning how to read and document site levels. This is really neat because with the drawings, photos, and level information we are able to throw in all into a computer program and document a 3-D rendering. Leveling only took about 2 days so it was a quick turn around, and then we began removing the vast amounts of rocks to try and make more sense out of what is going on at the site.  A funny thing about removing rocks is that nobody believed me when I said that I was strong enough to get the big rock out, and when I did it they all were shocked and made fun of me saying I looked like I was in the Celtic games.

Wednesday we went on our field trip to Keem beach, which was absolutely beautiful! It was a hot day, Stuart's car said 26 Celsius (so about 82 Fahrenheit). We went to Boycott's farm property and learned about his control over the land and the local myths surrounding him.  Apparently he is not really that bad of a guy, but everyone has their own stories saying that he was asking everyone to do too much farm work.  Everyone in the town said no and refused to work, this is where we get the term "to boycott" from.

After Boycott's house we walked a bit longer to see some booley houses, which are basically little summer/winter huts for cow farmers to live in when they bring their animals out into country land to graze in the off seasons.  They are scattered all over western Europe. Here I am enjoying eating my lunch in one of the booley houses.



My back was hurting pretty bad so I opted out of walking up higher to the lookout tower and went down to Keem beach with a few others.

The sand was really nice and we all stuck our feet in the water and don't let the tropical colors fool you, it was freezing but felt good on our aching feet.  There was a cute lab running around the beach with us and played catch with us in the water. Rachel and I decided that we wanted to go swimming in the ocean just to say that we had done it.  It was absolutely freezing but completely worth it, and wasn't too bad when we got out and let the sun dry us off.

Overall work on Thursday was pretty slow going, so we were getting a bit silly.

Later on at site when I was back to work at digging I found what I thought was another "potato" rock, which is really a fire cracked stone that slightly resembles a potato.  When I pulled it out I realized it didn't quiet look like the others and showed it to Maddie and Stuart.  Apparently I found an 'unusual' (Stuart's word) and he believes that it is a piece of flint! So I can now officially say that I have found a bronze age artifact on an archaeological dig!!Rachel earlier had found a piece of chert, so it was an exciting day to say the least!  Below is a picture of me with this piece of flint.




Later on Thursday night we all threw together our groceries and made family style spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread.  We have already done a big taco night and are going to try and do more of these big dinners.

The dolphins come out every night around the same time to get dinner and show off and do tricks, so we went out with the new people to show them. I can't ever get a picture of the dolphins, so this picture of me and the others enjoying the dolphins will have to do.
 

Friday was a bit rainy so Stuart decided that we were going to have our first lab day.  It isn't nearly as rainy as what we would normally work in but the weather has been so great that he said we just needed to take advantage of it.  We learned how to use AutoCAD programming, which is also used by architects, builders, city planners, and engineers.  We used it to trace rocks and to overlap our drawings.  It took all day long but in the end we finished and were able to overlap every one's sections, avoiding each of us having to complete the whole trench.  It has been a slow day and everyone is sleepy, but there is a huge soccer game on so the entire house is going to walk down to the pub up the street and order dinner and watch.  Tomorrow a few of us are planning on walking down to a farmers market that is held every Saturday and just enjoy being out of the house, so that should be fun and maybe we will even get some fresh vegetables!