Well, the excavations finished this week and I realized that I have not provided an update in a long time. While this might make some of you worry (Mother), this is actually a good thing because it means I was keeping busy and was having such a great time with my friends that I was not on the internet all the time. Since I slacked off, I will give a brief summary of what I did and what we discovered at the excavations this year.
We were still working in the same area as last year on
top of Mont Lassois. There is about 12 to 18 inches of soil on top of the
bedrock which was removed with some heavy machinery. After much of the top
layer was scraped off, we cleaned off additional layers of dirt to search for
features, such as postholes, pits, and ditches. We opened a huge area and it
took four weeks to get everything visible and clean. What we discovered were
lots of postholes which indicated that there was another (or several) houses on
top of the plateau in addition to the large house which they discovered several
years ago. In the past then, the site had one very large house which they
believe belonged to the princess of Vix and then there were several smaller
houses, but still quite large, that were around the big house. The entire area
was then enclosed by a ditch which we also explored further. Several structures
of later dates were also evident during our work and two more graves were also
excavated this year.
I did none of this work though. I was adopted by the
documentation team and helped to describe and draw 300 of these postholes,
pits, and ditches. I worked with then daughter of one of our directors to do
this. I am incredibly grateful to her because, though she speaks English very
well, she let me practice my French which improved dramatically in a matter of
the first three days with her. She is only 19, but she is one of the sweetest
and most mature people I have ever met. It would have been a long and more
trying summer without her help! Anyway, we were quite the team and really
kicked ass at getting all of these documents in order. I even got to do some
drawings this year which turned out quite well in my humble opinion and much to
my surprise. My supervisors were also quite happy with my work and I feel good
knowing I helped make things run smoothly this year. The weather was also much
improved this year and we only had one day of rain, but it was not bad enough
to make us stop working.
In addition to the work, my very good friend The Hobbit
was able to come to the site at the last minute. He is in the top ten of my
favorite people in the world, so we had a lot of laughs and good memories again
from this summer. There were a lot of great people at the site this year in
general. I really liked the people on the Swiss team, which was a nice change
from last year and the Austrians were great this year too! Overall, there were
lots of good conversations, good jokes, and late nights this summer. I have
never felt more exhausted after an excavation as I do this year. It was worth
it though.
To recover so that I may do more work when I arrive home,
I am going to Nice for a week. Many people know of Nice, a beautiful and
expensive city in the south of France which overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. I am
so excited to see the beach and the water I can hardly stand it. I am sitting
at the train station now waiting for my train (which goes back to Lyon first).
Why did I decide to go all the way down to Nice? Well, there are Minnesotans in
Nice. A couple who went to high school with Reed and who I have met several
times have taken a year off from the States to live in Nice. I am looking
forward to some familiar faces and accents and I hope they are too! After Nice
I will go back to Paris for a day or two and then will finally fly home on the
21st of August. I will write again before then to share my
adventures, but for the moment, just know that I am happy, relaxed, and going
to a fantastic place in just a few hours!
Hugs to all!
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