Today was the day that Star the site greyhound finally decided enough was enough, she was tired of having to stand up between digger's knees all the way to site, so since she was first off the boat she decided it was time to stake her claim early & bag the best seat, after all she is a lady of mature years and deserves to be comfy:
Once at site everyone got stuck in, we're all very conscious that time is ticking away to the end of the digging season, can't believe it's been nearly 6 weeks already, it's gone by in a flash:
It was Rose's last day today before she has to go back to her real life and proper job, and she celebrated this in style by getting not just one, but two, star finds of the day at the same time. These are really cool Iron Age strike-a-lights - the one on the right is heavily grooved on both sides and has obviously been very well used, whilst the the on the left has only light striations, which don't show up very well in the photo but are definitely there:
This is Rose attempting to follow my directions to look suitably ecstatic that she's beaten Elvire to the star find of the day slot, she was hamming it up a bit admittedly:
Elvire had to be content with second place for her decorated bone weaving batten, which is good in its own right but in my humble opinion not as good as a strike a light, and since I'm the only one who knows the login to the dig diary I get to choose the winner:
Julie really liked it as well and took its picture in situ, sporting her shiny new bright red hard hat, which Steve had bought her as a present as he thought she ought to have a hard hat to match her jacket - apparently the man in the shop thought it was a very romantic gesture. We did have a bit of fun trying to put it together as the inner straps seemed too short and we couldn't be bothered to read the instructions but Gavin sorted it in the end - at least we'll still be able to see where she is when the mist rolls in:
Keith was busy doing magnetic susceptibility readings around the hearth in the subdivided roundhouse section, which is where a lot of the goodies have come from. I did buy them a big pack of golf tees for marking out where to take the samples from, but Steve gave them to Bonnie to use for her survey points and I think they then finished up in her site bag and went away with her, so they were forced to use finds tags (i.e. seed labels) as markers, hence all the funny little white things sticking up around Keith's feet.
This is Keith taking the readings:
...then holding the gizmo up calling out the reading so Steve (out of shot at the top of the section) could record them. He does look a bit as if he's declaiming something Shakespearian, probably to do with skulls, but maybe that's just me:
Jackie had another pig skull in among the rubble, Julie identified it as an old female pig - I didn't know you could tell pigs apart from their skulls but you can, it's to do with the size & shape of the tusks, you learn something new every day:
We've had several large old pigs from the same general area, plus of course our piglet in the passageway from a few week back, so obviously lots of eating pork going on. Unsurprising really considering how good pigs are at eating anything at all and turning it in to meat, into recent times pigs were kept in Orkney farms as a waste disposal operative that you could also eat.
Finally at the end of a long day it was time to head home again, Star decided to try a different seat along with her good friend Michel.
She looks quite content there, but she had had a particularly successful food scrounging lunchtime, especially from Rose who treated her to a whole Baby Bel and half a (cooked) chicken breast as a going away present - although technically since it was Rose that was leaving not Star the gifts should've been going the other way.