There's just two and a half weeks of this season's excavation left, and thoughts are already turning to how we're going to pay for the 2020 season, but I think I've come up with a cunning plan. It was Alan that gave me the idea - here he is, drawing another of his amazingly good sections whilst attempting not to drown in his flooded area:
The reason it's flooded is that there's a freshwater spring bubbling up underneath it - as if we don't have enough to worry about, what with the Atlantic trying to both suck the site away under our feet every high tide and take the top of it off every winter storm, and this is where my cunning plan comes in: Swandro spring water, bottled at source in the remote island of Rousay, where it's bubbled quietly for thousands of years, imbued with mystical prehistoric essence, no doubt a potent and life-giving elixir of power - I bottled the first one today:
Klaudia told me that folk were queuing up to pay thousands for the chance to drink some yicky stuff out of an Egyptian sarcophagus (unbelievably true - Google 'Mummy Juice' but not if you're of a delicate disposition or are just about to have your tea) so don't see why it wouldn't work for us - Swandro Springwater, coming to a supermarket near you!
Had an addition to our laser scanning team today with Prof Andy Wilson of the University of Bradford plus shed loads of equipment and he wasted no time getting going, leaping into action to get a close up scan of the possible side chamber to the tomb, which is sadly very close to the sea and despite all our careful sandbagging suffered a bit of slippage over the winter:
Jackie's also getting well stuck in to her corbelled cell which is still going down, and looks to have either a built in cupboard or an entrance passageway at one side, don't know which yet but they're Iron Age:
The rest of the site was the subject of a big clean and photo shoot, to be followed by photogrammetry and then a mega laser scan after everyone left for the evening, here's one of the extension trenches over the Iron Age house which is now looking really smart:
So at the end of the day all was looking great but the forecast overnight is heavy thunderstorms followed by thunderstorms tomorrow till about 1pm - still, look on the bright side, my on site bottling plant won;t be running short of spring water any time soon!