Week 4 Achill Island: 12-19 June 2016

So I have been pretty impressed with myself and the continued writing of these posts.  Granted there isn't much to do on this island and today is gross and raining, but whatever.

Monday was a very normal day of troweling and bucket hauling, nothing exciting happened but it was productive.

On Tuesday we all got ready and dressed for a normal day, but by the time we were driven to the site the rain and wind were vicious and Stuart made the call to work in the lab.  We had a lot of the day off once we got back and everyone mostly worked on our papers and napped around and enjoyed the fire. Once we got into the lab we finished up the Auto Cad drawing and learned how to export it to photoshop to distinguish between the different structures in our trench.  After we did this it was easy to see the separate segments to the trench.  Looking right at it is a little confusing because there are so many rocks.  

Wednesday as usual is our mini-field trip day.  It was over cast and drizzly but we went on anyway to Annagh. It was very difficult to get to the booley houses that our trip was taking us to, we had to walk through streams and over bog. The bog is scary and should be featured in action movies instead of quicksand.  It looks very similar to the normal ground (maybe a bit  of a brighter green) and lays in crevices in the land.  If you step in the wrong spot you sink deep into a hole of mushy muddy land.  Occasionally it is so deep it goes up to your hips or waist.  It suctions you in so intensely that it takes help to even get your foot out!! The good news that I learned from this trip is that my boots are in fact water proof.

When we finally reached the peak of the mountain the wind was so intense we thought we were going to have to pass on seeing the site and turn around.  Nobody could hear each other talking and we were all being pushed around by the gusts. I was almost completely knocked over a few times. We decided to try and walk down a little bit to see if the wind would lessen, and thankfully it was being blocked by the cliff side allowing us to trek on.  We saw more booley houses around Annagh Bay that were mostly in tact, which was really neat. There was one with a partial roof still and a full front door, so we were able to climb inside.  It was a tight squeeze but inside was warmer and spacious, and there was even evidence of small cubbies built into the walls to store items.  While we were talking the clouds blew in behind Stuart's back and we could no longer see the trail.  Once we pointed it out he just said, "Oh, we should probably get going!".  We ended up getting back up the mountain with little issues but it was quite the adventurous day.

The cloudy bit is our path back up

The front door to a booley house

We were back on site on Thursday with new exciting goals for our trench.  We ended up exposing a bit more of the pit and in doing so found what seemed to be an intact piece of the round house wall.  It was about two feet down and was much deeper than expected.  The day just continued getting more and more odd as we had to take the passage walkway down two feet for the entire pathway. We found a few lithic flint pieces as well scattered about. These flint pieces confused us because they were in the entryway, which is not normally where these would be stored. 

Friday was even more exciting! We completed extending the trench to expose the entire entry way and part of the house.  i found two more lithics as I was digging at the back of the entryway! Stuart was happy and not happy about these, he believes that one (the more u-shaped one) is an arrow hull shaper. The issue with this is that these u-shaped arrow shapers are dated back to the neolithic time period, and we are working on a bronze age house, a couple hundred years off.  To add to the excitement the four week diggers found a post medieval/ pre 19th century bottle of some sort as well as a piece of amethyst. 

In less exciting news, but a much cuter story we all watched as a baby lamb got separated from its mom.  It made horrible crying noises as it paced back and forth over our area of the mountain for around 30 minutes.  We were all very upset over these horrible crying noises so I announced that I was ready to adopt the lamb. Only a few minutes lady the baby saw its mom and let out a happy yelp as it galloped all the way to its mom.  It was super duper cute! 

Saturday just a few of us went on the Clew Bay field trip. We went to a rural life museum and saw two abbeys as well as one of Grace O'Malley's tower houses.  It was a long and tiring day but lots of fun.  On the way back we picked up the new people from the train station and of course had to go with Jackie to Nevin's diner to be shown off.  I had a huge plate of fish and chips that were delicious! 

As usual on a Saturday night we took the new people down to Gielty's pub to hang out and meet everyone. There were a surprising amount of American tourists there and they all began to sing loudly and poorly the Piano Man.  That was our cue to get out of there! Everyone just went to bed when we got home and had a lovely lazy and rainy Sunday.