Today was to be our last day of work, allowing us to use tomorrow for storing artifacts, doing inventory, cleaning up, etc. I stress – “was.” As usual, things did not go as planned. Keeping with our usual end of the season tradition, an important crate of yet-to-be analyzed Hellenistic pottery was discovered. No major problem, however – we came up with a plan to solve the problem. Two people took the morning and did a pre-sort of the pottery, so that Brandon can analyze and record the pottery more quickly. This really speeds the process up. He started reading the pottery, but will need some time tomorrow to finish this up. For my part, I finished the Roman pottery this morning so it was all returned to its proper location. On the bright side, we did complete all our drawing, labeling, and photographing of artifacts. We even successfully created an accurate inventory of PKAP supplies that we can use in the off-season to order the appropriate items that need to be restocked – like bags and tags.
The other thing that we completed today was the taking of the group photo. This is always a major event and entails argument about the location, what people should wear, etc. This year it went smoothly. Brandon came up with the good idea of taking the photo just inside the doorway of Terra Ombra, surrounded by trays of pottery. Since this was where all our work took place, it made sense. The actual taking of the photo, though, was a bit harder to accomplish. Brandon set up his mega million dollar camera on a tripod with a remote control. He then took a shot of everyone standing there to see how it looked – and it looked fine. Then he came around and stood with us and took the photo – and it looked way too dark. So we repeated the process with the same result. And again. At this point it became quite humorous, with people making wisecracks at Brandon’s expense – well, mainly me. He then had Kaylee switch sides, checked the exposure – and it was fine, and then stood in her spot and took the picture – and it was too dark. Now everyone was having a great time with this, except for Brandon. He eventually locked the exposure and then took the picture and it worked, and then he said “I’m smarter than the camera.” I sort of think the jury might still be out on that question. And we of course took the mandatory PKAP goofy shot.
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 