Once we returned from the season in Glencoe there was still plenty work to do. Alongside our students we set out to ensure all our records, finds and samples were in order after the season. It is always a little chaotic at the end of the field season so it is good to have time to double check records, hunt down stray samples and fix numbering errors before our memories get foggy!
The team had a go at many different facets of post-excavation with records digitisation a big job for the excavation, survey, and creative media teams. Drawings have been inked up, notebooks scanned and muddy context sheet deciphered.
Led by Leonore our excavation team students washed and brushed all our finds, carefully treating and packing fragile artefacts, and seperating out the ceramics we are interested in sampling for lipids and phytoliths. The cleaning process unveils a lot of details that are hard to spot with muddy hands and muddier finds in the trenches and so it was a great opportunity to find out more about our finds as we cleaned, we can now add two more beautifully decorated lead spindle whorls to our growing collection from Glencoe sites.
Our soil samples are being processed in the lab – we will soon have some exciting updates about the methods we are using to extract stories from the soil!
Our survey team worked to digitise their recording forms and update the projects GIS from the gps units, building up a busier picture of life in Glencoe, and helping us understand the relationship between the townships, shieling, and hunting forests of Glencoe.
Our creative media team also had records to digitse, footage to edit together and an installation to plan. With their usual enthusiasm the team dove into this with a gusto. In only two days they produced a new video summarising the season with footage from site and interviews with our team, redesigned the Glencoe segment of our department display case in the level 2 hall, and installed their pigments and plans installation in the Molema.
Dr Cole Juckette joined us again in post-ex week to teach students about how we process our photomodels from site. You can find out more about this process – and what we use our models for here!
We’re now working towards writing up our reports on the seasons work! Over the next few months you might catch us giving talks on this seasons findings. You can find out more about upcoming events here.
– Dr Edward Stewart
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